Mikó Árpád – Verő Mária - Jávor Anna szerk.: Mátyás király öröksége, Késő reneszánsz művészet Magyarországon (16–17. század) 2. kötet (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 2008/4)
The English Summary of Volumes I—II
ary. The style, taste and philosophy of Mannerism was derived from the general shock of the "Renaissance crisis" and the faltering of "social progress" : Many books and essays have dealt with the "definition of Mannerism", but the criteria for distinguishing Mannerist works from those of the Renaissance and the Baroque have never been finally settled. It is now clear that neither Late Renaissance occultism nor Neostoicism can be regarded as the philosophy of Mannerism. The structure of Mannerist literary works is usually presented as a loosely-connected set of components. This lack of structure may correspond to the presumed world-view of Mannerist, where disharmony had taken the place of Renaissance harmony. The most prominent style characteristic of Mannerism writers is a fondness for metaphor. A consensus has arisen as to the forms of artificial metaphors: concettos or contrived apparent contradictions are the forms most typical of Mannerism poetry. Such poetic devices, however, were already widespread in medieval lyric poetry. It is no doubt because the concept of Mannerist literature was drawn from the visual arts that the art form widely held to be most characteristic of the time is the emblem, a form based on the interaction of text and image. Since this artistic technique has classical roots and was widely adopted by Italian Renaissance artists in the late 15 th century, it is very difficult to define which emblematic art is specifically Mannerist. Work on Mannerist concettos traced the origins of the aesthetics of the time to a popular branch of Neoplatonism. The radical Platonism of the Italian philosopher Francesco Patrizi was identified as the "poetics" of Mannerism. Scholars researching Mannerism admitted that there was indeed no period of cultural history which separated the Renaissance from the Baroque in space or time. Heinrich Wölfflin described as the "narrow ledge of the cinquecento" that very short period before the mid- 16 th century when the Italian "Grand Renaissance" turned into the Baroque. It was also clear that literary Mannerism was not a historical category but an utterly speculative concept. Nonetheless, it became common to speak of the Mannerist Era, the Mannerist Style, and Mannerists. The term "Hungarian Mannerist literature" does have some validity, however, but within certain constraints. In the years between the 1580s and the 1630s there undoubtedly existed an elite strand of Hungarian literature which can be delineated from earlier Renaissance conventions and the later Baroque mode of expression. It is a style era which can be defined only in the context of the work and literary connections of one writer, János Rimay. Rimay's poetry clearly displays the Late Renaissance classical style. Despite his humanist leanings, he was principally concerned with developing the vernacular, refining his rhetoric and maintaining "court" elite culture. Nonetheless, Rimay's work can in every respect be linked up with the ideas associated with European Mannerism. The Stoic dialogue subjects and resignation, the tendency to self-chastisement, the deep reflections, the fragmenting compositions, the polished, intellectual love poetry, the innovations in rhyme and trope verging on the morbid, the openness to visual culture, the sophistication in the art of the emblem, and above all a prose style which was complex to the point of incomprehensibility, can all be traced to the doctrines of Justus Lipsius and mark Rimay out as a Mannerist writer. The few writers identifiable as followers of the literary movement Rimay established in Hungary were all demonstrably in contact with Rimay himself, through literary circles and poetic academies which, right from in his youth, he made conscious and repeated efforts to set up. The term "Mannerist writer" is sometimes applied to all acquaintances of Rimay and followers of Lipsius, but is better reserved for those writers who followed Rimay in his mode of writing as well as his ideas. Mannerism and Baroque Wölfflin category pairs fundamentally influenced thinking on Mannerism, and although they are art-historical criteria they have been frequently been applied to the interpretation of literature. In the 1960s and 70s, Mannerism-interpreters seeking formal results placed great emphasis on differences between "era-styles". Others, such as Tibor Klaniczay, saw it as a mistake to overestimate the opposition between Renaissance and Mannerism, conceiving Mannerism to be the crisis of the Renaissance. It was therefore part of the Renaissance and the continuation of its ideals, rather than a rebuttal of them. Wolfflin's opposed pairs examine the diverging features of the Renaissance and the Baroque. Mannerism is not mentioned. Those who thought in terms of a "Mannerist breakdown of Renaissance composition", a sign pointing towards the Baroque, therefore reduced the significance of Mannerism as a distinct "interregnum". Those who believed in the social determination of culture usually attempted to link Mannerism to the Renaissance, and those who proclaimed the autonomy of art tended more to bind it to the Baroque. Those who explained Mannerism in Wölfflin terms set out to bring the two similar movements — Mannerism and Baroque — together rather than to demarcate them. The Wölfflin theory of art, which had been looked on as obsolete and buried, has nonetheless proved resilient in both art and literature, because it is based on artistic forms, i.e. on very hard facts. Perhaps it was that, more than anything else, which brought about the downfall of Mannerism.
