hulit1-2, Exercise 3: Balassi and Zrinyi

Model answer (check the details):

Backgrounds: Balassi (1554 to 1594) was a nobleman and soldier whose life was marked by debts, lawsuits and exile, and who died of wounds in a siege (check). Zrinyi (1620 to 1664) was a Croatian-Hungarian magnate, a military commander and statesman, and one of the most powerful men in the kingdom.

Forms: Balassi wrote lyric poems: love poems, religious verse and soldiers' songs, many in a nine-line stanza named after him. Zrinyi wrote a long epic, the Szigeti veszedelem (1651), modelled on Italian Renaissance epics, as well as prose on politics and war.

What each shows: both are soldier-writers on the Ottoman frontier, so the wars shaped their lives and their themes. Balassi shows that Hungarian could carry personal, lyric poetry in a European Renaissance manner. Zrinyi shows that it could carry a long heroic poem and serious political argument. Between them they show Hungarian becoming a language of high literature.