A Petőfi-kutatás hagyományai és távlatai • Researching Petőfi’s Oeuvre: Traditions and Perspectives

My paper reviews the literary-historical researches on the oeuvre of Sándor Petőfi (1823–1849), one of the most significant poets of 19 th -century Hungarian literature, from the aspect of the historiographical reasons that justify the central role of his oeuvre in the general tradition of Hungarian literary history. The research on Petőfi’s oeuvre is distinguished by its unique position in relation to the studies of other classical literary oeuvres, due to the diversity of material, cov-erage and perspectives. Since the end of the 19 th century, his works has been the object of three annotated critical editions, each of which has been or is being produced