A Representation of Petőfi in the Bach Era Soma Orlai Petrich: Petőfi in Debrecen in 1844 (1857)

Abstract

My paper raises a dual hypothesis. First, the beginnings of the evolution of Petőfi’s social‐communal memory are inseparable from the history of the illustrated press and its upsurge in the 1850s. Second, the examination of Petőfi’s iconography also provides an insight into the press‐historical and economic registers of the Petőfi discourse, which we cannot detect through fiction, science or written journalistic sources alone. In the second half of my paper, I analyze one of the most significant representations of Petőfi in the period which may bring us closer to the contextual understanding of Petőfiʹs memory of the time.