Hungarian literature

Written literature has been traced back to 1200 but it was a rich surviving oral literature that influenced Bálint Balassi (1554–1594) and the development of a secular poetic tradition in the 16th century. Habsburg Hungary welcomed the baroque, reflected in major poets such as Miklós Zrínyi (1620–1664). The Enlightenment stimulated writers such as the lyric poet Mihály Csokonai Vitéz (1773–1805) but the national epics of János Arany and the revolutionary fervour of his friend Sándor Petöfi reached a much wider public. The Hungarian novel, influenced by European realism, was developed by the arch-romantic Mór Jókai (1825–1904) and his biographer Kálmán Mikszáth (1847–1910). In the early 20th century the leftist literary magazine Nyugat involved distinguished writers including the Symbolist poet Endre Ady (1877–1919). Socialist writing, such as the work of Tibor Déry (1894–1977), flourished between the wars. Although the suppression of the 1956 uprising discouraged writers who had benefited from a post-Stalinist thaw, influentially courageous and troubled poets such as Ferenc Juhász (1928– ) and László Nagy (1925–1978) have continued to confront the intractable problems of life, death, and Hungary.