Tóth Arnold: Vőfélykönyvek és vőfélyversek a 19. században - Officina Musei 22. (Miskolc, 2015)
Summary
The Research Tasks A review of the history of research into vőfély rhymes shows that ethnographic/ folklore literature has typically been given only incidental treatment. Accordingly, the direction, scope and quality of previous research vary greatly depending on the disciplinary focus of such research. The oldest and most important approach is that of the research into customary traditions which regularly cover vőfély verses in describing and analysing wedding events. Earlier approaches include research into chap literature with related findings of history of printing, sociology of reading and cultural history. Research into folk writings treats wedding usher books as a particular category of folk manuscripts from the additional perspectives of folklore aesthetics, the anthropology of writing and semantics. This subject is of interest for folk music research insofar as there are data available on tunes of vőfély verses, wedding ushers’ sung repertoire and any dances they might perform. The most significant approach in terms of both scope and findings is research into rural nutrition: wedding dinner related verses in vőfély books are an excellent source of information on the various courses and dishes typical of festive meals in the 19th century. This book fits into the range of research into public poetry, a borderline discipline between literary history and folkloristics. In the words of Imola KÜLLŐS, public poetry in the 16th to 18th centuries “were written in the native language and mostly linked to a particular occasion and/or function. They do not contain authorial fiction, and are at least more determined by the occasion and the function than individual poetic invention. Texts from both identified and anonymous authors were passed on (and varied) by word of mouth as well as in writing (in the form of handwritten copies and cheap printed material).” This definition is valid for 19th-century vőfély rhymes, as well, which are, therefore, regarded as a historical successor of l6,h-to- 18th-century public poetry. Public poetry was an intermediary through which there was a continuous bidirectional stream of ‘goods’ (i.e. genres, texts, sujets, motifs, verse forms, etc.) between elite culture (literature) and popular culture (folklore). For the purpose of this book, this brings about the need, firstly, to examine the social status and education of authors and copiers of handwritten wedding usher books and rhymes, as well as of professional/semi-professional wedding ushers; and secondly to take account of neoclassical/literate tools of poetry, stylistic features and themes which distinguish vőfély verses from pieces of folk poetry and bring them more into the realm of public poetry. The questions raised herein are arranged into five main topical groups, which also define the chapters this treatise is divided into. The chapter called Sources provides an analytical description of first the chapbooks and then the nine handwritten folk manuscripts, raising issues relating to folk writings in general with a view to pointing out the specificities that set vőfély books apart from other folk manuscript genres. To this end, each manuscript is analysed in detail in terms of both form and substance, 533
