Relationships of György Martonfalvi Tóth and Sámuel Köleséri, sr. in the light of the poetry collections compiled for their death

Abstract

This paper focuses on the elegy collections mourning the two childhood friends, Sámuel Köleséri, Sr. and György Martonfalvi Tóth. Based on the information extracted from the elegies, I am trying to delineate the microsocial context that surrounded these two prominent figures of the 17th century intellectual scene of Debrecen (Samuel Köleséri, Sr. and György Martonfalvi Tóth). In the analysis of elegy collections, several sets of texts are available at the same time to explore the private relationships of the deceased. In addition to the Latin language elegies and their signatures, the Latin prefaces and Hungarian poetic lamentations accompanying the documents are also very informative in this respect. The voice of family members, childhood friends, schoolmates, close acquaintances, colleagues, students and patrons of the deceased calls out from the poems, providing some novel information and data on the family relations, external and internal characteristics, biographical data, circumstances and cause of death of these two men. Furthermore, the study also touches upon the poetic-rhetorical form and the peculiarities of the poems, as well as the topical expressions in the characterization of the departed, thus pointing out the conformity to or deviations from the peculiarities registered in previous literary analyses.