Mór Jókai (redirected from Maurice Jokai)

Jókai, Mór 

Born Feb. 18, 1825, in Komárom; died May 5, 1904, in Budapest. Hungarian author from a minor gentry family. His first novel, Weekdays (1846), is written in the traditions of romanticism, with which his subsequent work is also associated.

Beginning in 1847, Jókai edited the progressive journal Életképek. In 1848, he and S. Petőfi took part in the revolution, but Jókai soon returned to a position of reconciliation with the Hapsburgs. He celebrated the national liberation struggle in his novels The Golden Age of Transylvania (1852) and The Sons of the Man With a Heart of Stone (1869; Russian translation, 1959; film of the same name, 1965). His enthusiasm for the idea of gradual reform is reflected in the novels A Hungarian Nabob (1853; film of the same name, 1966), Zoltán Kárpáthy (1854), and The New Squire (1963).

Jókai placed his hopes in the development of a capitalist economy (the novels Black Diamonds, 1870, and A Man of Gold, 1873; Russian translations, 1882). Elements of entertainment occupy an important place in Jókai’s later work, but the novel The Prisoner Rabi (1879) and the novella Yellow Rose (1893; Russian translation, 1956) contain realistic features.

WORKS

Válogatott művei [vols. 1–32]. Budapest, 1954–62.

REFERENCES

Klaniczai, T., J. Szauder, and M. Szabolcsi. Kratkaia istoriia vengerskoi literatury XI-XX vv. Budapest, 1962. (Translated from Hungarian.)
Sőtér, I. Romantika és realizmus. Budapest, 1956.
Dely, Zs. A fiatal Jókai nyelve és stilusa. Budapest, 1969.

E. I. MALYKHINA