The depiction of the gentry in the novels of Zsigmond Móricz

In my dissertation I focus on the novels of Zsigmond Móricz that depict a certain social phenomenon known as the gentry. I concentrate on how Zsigmond Móricz portrays the gentry and the members of that class, the heroes of his novels, in the period of crisis of the Dual Monarchy and in the years between the two world wars. I was interested in discovering the view the author takes of the historical context and the reasons for the demise of this social class and associated phenomena, and his view of the gentry's potential for transformation. To obtain an understanding of the topic and the question I am looking at, I first focus on explaining the concept of the gentry and then go on to outline the historical and social context of the period under analysis and the literary context in which Móricz's novels on the gentry emerged. The central part of the study comprises analyses of four of his novels: Kivilágos kivirradtig (Until the Morning Light), Úri muri (The Pleasures of the Gentry), Forró mezők (Incandescent Fields) and Rokonok (Relatives). All four novels were written in the interwar years (1924-1932), the period on which I have chosen to focus in my dissertation. The novels I examine are ones that Hungarian literary history describes as social novels or novels about the gentry, or in other words, novels..