Hungarian nationalism was born from proving the vernacular fit the highest literary genre

Evidence

Of the birth of Hungarian nationalism Ignotus writes that it is an event ‘recent enough to be dated: 1772, the year of publication of some unreadable works by the versatile Hungarian author György Bessenyei, then a resident in Vienna and serving in Maria Theresa’s bodyguard… . Bessenyei’s magna opera were meant to prove that the Hungarian language was suitable for the very highest literary genre.’ Further stimulus was provided by the extensive publications of Ferenc Kazinczy (1759–1831), ‘the father of Hungarian literature,’ and by the removal, in 1784, of what became the University of Budapest to that city from the small provincial town of Trnava. Its first political expression was the Latin-speaking Magyar nobility’s hostile reaction in the 1780s to Emperor Joseph II’s decision to replace Latin by German as the prime language of imperial administration. — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 296

Categorization

• XREF: Concrete case of vernacular print-language legitimacy production — the mechanism Anderson names ‘print-capitalism’ generating national identity. — connects to: Hungarian noble elites shifted their political language from Latin to Magyar — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 431; Cultivated middle classes drove vernacular nationalist movements across Europe — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 480; National consciousness forms through language and literature, not only through shared ancestry

Related

• Hungarian noble elites shifted their political language from Latin to Magyar (similarity 0.89)
• Popular nationalism reproduced exclusion by demanding linguistic uniformity (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• National consciousness forms through language and literature, not only through shared ancestry #expands (0.82)
• Cultivated middle classes drove vernacular nationalist movements across Europe #complicates (0.78) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 480