REFERENCE ONLY UNIVERSITY OF LONDON THESIS Degree Year Name of Author p/v j) 1009 )(rW£1/ 4r/*l\z*s‘ COPYRIGHT This is a thesis accepted for a Higher Degree of the University of London. It is an unpublished typescript and the copyright is held by the author. All persons consulting this thesis must read and abide by the Copyright Declaration below. COPYRIGHT DECLARATION I recognise that the copyright of the above-described thesis rests with the author and that no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without the prior written consent of the author. LOANS Theses may not be loaned but may be consulted within the library of University College London upon application. REPRODUCTION University of London theses may not be reproduced without explicit written permission from Library Services, University College London. Regulations concerning reproduction vary according to the date of acceptance of the thesis and are listed below as guidelines. A. Before 1962. Permission granted only upon the prior written consent of the author. (The Senate House Library will provide addresses where possible). B. 1962-1974. In many cases the author has agreed to permit copying upon completion of a Copyright Declaration. C. 1975-1988. Most theses may be copied upon completion of a Copyright Declaration. D. 1989 onwards. Most theses may be copied. This thesis com es within category D. This copy has been deposited in the library of University College London, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT. 1 The English and Classical Substance of Babbs’s Novels Andrea Denby, Ph.D. thesis University College London 2001-2005 UMI Number: U591931 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI U591931 Published by ProQuest LLC 2013. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 2 Abstract The English and Classical Substance of Babits’s Novels This thesis investigates Mihaly Babits’s increasingly original utilisation of English and classical literature in his five novels. It also interprets the relevance of its findings. Intertextuality originating in English works is traceable in Babits’s first novel, A golyakalifa (1916) and in his second novel, Kartyavar (1915-1923). Babits’sA golyakalifa has roots in Virgil’s Eclogues, Coleridge’s and Wordsworth’s verse. It imitates Edgar Allan Poe’s, Robert Louis Stevenson’s and Oscar Wilde’s doppelg&nger fiction. The sources of intertextuality in Kartyavar are Virgil’s Aeneid and Charles Dickens’s Hard Times and Bleak House. Carlyle’s, Macaulay’s and J. S. Mill’s ideas form a basis ofKartyavar9 s philosophy. Babits drew on Dickens in the way he created his characters in Kartyavar. Babits’s third novel, Timor Virgil fia (1919-1922) incorporates certain themes of Shakespeare’s plays as well. It is a hypertext of The Aeneid, and transposes themes and moods from Keats’s, Wordsworth’s and Tennyson’s verse. It has many intertexts such as quotations from Virgil and St. Augustine. Babits’s fourth novel, Halalfiai (1927) and his last novel, Elza pilota (1918-1933) are more original hypertexts of their exemplars. Halalfiai has roots in George Eliot’s and George Meredith’s novels. It has intertextual episodes which are adaptations of Meredith’s The Egoist. Halalfiai is also an architectural hypertext of particular works by Fielding, Smollett, and Goldsmith. Elza pilota (1933) reads as a metatext of some of its sources, such as Thomas More’s Utopia and Bacon’s New Atlantis, but is principally an ingenious hypertext of Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Poe’s as well as H. G. Wells’s works. It creates its own innovative narrative and story. 3 Contents Introduction: Mih&ly Babits’s family background and education 8 A golyakalifa | CHAPTER 1 25 1.1 Contents 25 1.2 An introduction to the secondary literatureA of golyakalifa 26 1.3 The flight of the ego inA golyakalifa and Poe’sWilliam Wilson 27 1.4 Babits’s reconstruction of R. L. Stevenson’sDr Jekyll and Mr Hyde 36 1.4.1 The supremacy of the respectable self 37 1.4.2 The alter ego 38 1.4.3 The alter ego’s conquest over the main self 39 1. 5 A diversion 42 1.5.1 Agolyakalifa’s roots in Coleridge 42 1.6 A further analysis of the roots and a parallel of Babits’s novel 45 1.6.1 Morton Prince’s and Dickens’s role in the creationA ofgolyakalifa 45 1.6.2 Ruskin and Proust 51 1.6.3 Dickens and Morton Prince 53 1.6.4 Morton Prince 55 1.6.5The Picture of Dorian Gray 57 1.6.6 Virgil, Poe and Wilde: Conclusion 61 4 K&rtyavar\ CHAPTER 2 67 2.1 Contents 67 2.2 A brief introduction into the secondary literature on the novel 68 2.3 Main features ofK&rtyavar and their genetic roots in Dickens 71 2.3.1 Narration 71 2.3.2 Narrative style and subtexts 71 2.3.3 Characters 73 2.3.4 Descriptions of themes 76 2.3.5 Genre 78 2.4 A close analysis of the text 80 2.4.1 Babits’s transposition of the beginning ofBleak House in Kartyavar 80 2.4.2 Kartyavar’s story and its circumstances 83 2.5 Heroism and predestination - history and place 106 2.6 The closing ofKartyavar 110 2.7 Conclusion 114 Timdr Virgil fia (1919-1922) | CHAPTER 3 116 3.1 Contents 116 3.2 Introduction toTimdr Virgil fia 117 3 .3 Babits’s concept of Virgil as a classic and its parallel with T.S. Eliot 119 3.4 Virgil in Hungarian literary history 122 3 .5 The classical and English origins of Babits’s Virgilianism 129 3.6 The themes and compositional featuresTimdr of Virgil fia 131 3.7 Virgilian and English sources of melancholy in Babits’s novel 138 3.7.1 Sources of melancholyThe in Aeneid and in Timdr Virgilfia 138 3.7.2 Other classical and English sources of melancholy in Babits’s novel 140 3.8 Virgil and Shakespeare inTimdr Virgil fia 146 3.9 An interpretation of the novel on the basis of its Virgilian leitmotif 151 3.10 Conclusion 157 6 Halalfiai CHAPTER \ 4 4.1 Contents 158 4.2 An overview of Hungarian secondary literature on the novel 159 4.3 Society as portrayedHalalfiai in 171 4.4 The classical, European and English qualitiesHalalfiai of 175 4.4.1 Don Quixote 177 4.4.2 Concrete English References 181 4.4.3 Gothic crime story 187 4.4.4 Features of the Eighteenth-century English Novel of Adventure 188 4.4.5 Meredith 190 4.5 Hal&lfiai’s story-line and its English sources 195 4.6 Conclusion 209 Elza pildta CHAPTER \ 5 212 5.1 Contents 212 5.2 A summary of secondary literature 213 5.3 The story-line ofElza pildta 219 5.4 The main English sources ofElza pildta 229 5 4 1 Thomas More’sUtopia (1518) 233 5.4.2 Francis Bacon’sNew Atlantis (1627) 236 5.4.3 Jonathan Swift,Gulliver’s Travels (1726) 239 5.4.4 Samuel Butler’sErewhon 243 5.4.5 Edgar Allan Poe 245 5.4.6 Herbert George Wells 251 5.4.6.1 Novels of behaviour 252 5.4.6.2 Novels of conflict and civilisation 258 5.4.6.3 A Modern romance 261 5.5 Conclusion 262 Conclusion of the thesis 264 Bibliography 269 General reference tools 269 Primary sources 272 Secondary sources 285 s INTRODUCTION: Babits’s family background and education1 Babits was bom 26 November 1883 in Szekszard. His father, Mihaly Babits, was a judge in this town. He was appointed judge in Budapest in 1888 and continued his career in Pecs after the decentralisation of the crown court in 1891. He was a liberal: this was manifested in his sympathy with Zola in the Dreyfus case. His character and the Dreyfus affair were both raw material for Babits in his Halalfiai. Babits’s grandfather was a Chief Constable. He had a hospitable nature and squandered most of the family fortune. Babits’s great-grandfather, also Mihaly Babits, was a physician who founded the General Hospital in Babits’s native town.2 He moved from Somogy3 to Tolna and thus transplanted the family’s coat of arms from the previous to the latter county. Latin was a language for communication in the home of Babits’s forebears. Babits’s great-grandfather, Mihaly Babits, spoke Latin to Babits’s grandfather and Babits’s father taught his son Latin before Babits went to school. Babits inherited his great-grandfather’s, grandfather’s and father’s medical and law books. He remained committed to his Latinate inheritance. His oeuvre has a strong Latin vein. Babits’s mother, Hajnalka Kelemen, was an aristocrat whose male relations ll base my brief resume of Babits’s background on the following sources: Istvan Gal, ‘Babits Mihaly dneletrajza gyermek—es ifjukor eveirol—Szabo Lorincz lejegyzeseben— \Jelenkor, 11 (1973), 1017- 18. Among other autobiographical documents Lorincz Szabo’s record can be found in Babits Mihaly 'Itt a halk es komoly beszed ideje \ ed.