Puritans and puritanicals -Studia Humanitatis 13

Összefoglaló

The present collection of essays on Puritan topics was compiled for non-Hungarian readers interested in the literary and cultural history of Hungary, with a focus on the Early Modern Era. This work seeks to give an overview of 17th-century Hungarian religious tracts and poems that were deeply rooted in the fertile soil of pious publications written in England and New England. As the title suggests, this book deals not only with some of the "shop-window Puritans" like William Ames and Lewis Bayly, but also with some other remarkable figures from earlier or later times, who can be considered as puritanical, like Sir Philip Sidney, Sir Henry Wotton, and Francis Quarles. Some of the texts include samples taken from 16th-17th-century Hungarian works: as, for instance from the Diary of the great theologian and psalm-translator, Albert Szenci Molnár who played an important role in Lewis Bayly's victorious authorial maiden voyage in this region. Interpreting some of the Hungarian and Latin laudatory poems dedicated to William Ames was a more difficult task, but it might bring the English-speaking readers closer to the intellectual colour of Hungary's album amicorum culture. The Puritan literary works of Hungarian authors discussed in the present book may function as "pontoon bridges", connecting us to the nations and cultures of the English-speaking world a whole lot more effectively than pretentious slogans, propaganda and forgettable diplomatic events.