From April 2nd to April 5th, 2024, works related to the implementation of the new version of the Jagiellonian University Repository system will be carried out. It will not be possible to enter new information into the repository during this time. We apologize for any inconvenience.
The study tries to redefine the notion of elegy through analysing some poems by János Arany. Another
aim of the investigation is to harmonize functional cognitive pragmatics with cognitive poetics
on a theoretical level. According to our central presupposition, the generic schema of elegy does not
merely consist of typical recurrent motifs (e.g. expressions of sadness and resignation, figurative
structures of time and motion, contrast between the past and the present); rather, elegiac composition
can be considered primarily a discursive schema, the instantiation of which offers the reader
a reconceptualization of the present through the involvement and the interaction of diverse epistemic
perspectives. From this it follows that the mental contextualization of the lyric speaker’s cognitive
and verbal activity plays an important role in reading elegies. The process of apostrophe contributes
to a figurative elaboration of the mental context; hence it gains its significance in the intersubjective
construal of the present, as well as in the presentification of the speaker as subject. The so-called
elegiac motifs or devices occur in the cognitive and meaning-creating process of poeticization, in
which the reader can not only dispense with her/his limits in social cognition, but s/he can also reflect
on the construed nature of the present. This reflection results in epistemic vagueness which is the
basic experience of an elegy. The paper demonstrates the details and the explanatory potential of
the proposed model through analysing a prototypical elegy (A lejtőn – On the Slope), a non-prototypical
one (Balzsamcsepp – Drop of the Balm), and a classical ode (Magányban – In Solitude).