László Németh’s last novel, “Irgalom” was published in 1965. In the history of the
interpretation of the novel, we can find some meticulous explorations of pedagogy-focused
readings. This late work of László Németh is mostly labelled by literary historians
as a life-work summarising or life-lesson transmitting creation or as a bildungsroman.
It becomes apparent from the writings of the first analysts that many mainly saw “Irgalom”
as an autobiographical novel. The validity of this reading was confirmed multiple
times by László Németh himself in his statements and correspondences. In the present
study, building upon the tradition of interpreting the work as an autobiographical
novel, we primarily explore the specific references to the history of pedagogy within
the text. We see this novel of Németh as a key novel, and in this frame of analysis
we attempt to identify the models of the various teacher characters and to present
the lifestyle and extra income opportunities of Hungarian secondary school teachers
between the two world wars based on references and portrayal of “Irgalom”. Our study
provides an example of utilizing works of literature as sources for educational history.
This type of source has regained wider popularity in the last decade in Hungarian
research on the history of pedagogy, thus our work can also contribute to strengthening
this rediscovered direction of literature pedagogy.
