Hans Jacob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen (ca. 1621-1676) is the most significant (and still readable) author of seventeenth-century German novels. His Abenteuerlicher Simplicius Simplicissimus remains the one German novel of its time that has attained the stature of "world literature": its unique mix of violent action and solitary reflection, its superlative humor, its realistic portrayal of a peasant turned soldier turned hermit has made it the longest-running bestseller in German literature. Read by students and scholars in comparative literature, history, and German, and by those interested in the development of the picaresque novel in Europe, the work and its "Continuations" have increasingly occupied scholars around the world, who have in recent years shown it to be a work of subtle structure and characterization, bearing the imprint of the most advanced political thinking of the time, and showing the influences of some of the most significant works of world literature, including Cervantes' Don Quixote and Barclay's Argenis. This volume of essays by leading Grimmelshausen scholars from Germany, the United States, and England provides analyses of significant topics in his life and works, including questions of genre, structure, satire, allegory, narratology, political thought, religion, morality, humor, realism, and mortality. Contributors: Christoph E. Schweitzer, Italo Michele Battafarano, Klaus Haberkamm, Rosmarie Zeller, Andreas Solbach, Dieter Breuer, Lynne Tatlock, Peter Hess, Shannon Keenan Greene, and Alan Menhennet.Karl F. Otto is Professor of German at the University of Pennsylvania and has written extensively on German Baroque literature.
Author(s): Karl F. Otto
Year: 2002
Language: English
Pages: 414
CONTENTS
......Page 6
ILLUSTRATIONS
......Page 8
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
......Page 10
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF GRIMMELSHAUSEN'S WORKS AND THEIR FIRST ENGLISH TRANSLATION
......Page 12
INTRODUCTION
......Page 16
I. Basics......Page 38
Problems in the Editions of
Grimmelshausen’s Works......Page 40
Grimmelshausen’s “Autobiographies”
and the Art of the Novel......Page 60
Allegorical and Astrological Forms in the Works of Grimmelshausen with Special Emphasis on the Prophecy Motif......Page 108
Grimmelshausen and the Picaresque Novel......Page 162
Grimmelshausen’s Ewig-währender Calender:
A Labyrinth of Knowledge and Reading......Page 182
Grimmelshausen’s Non-Simplician Novels......Page 216
In Grimmelshausen’s Tracks: The Literary and Cultural Legacy......Page 246
II. Critical Approaches......Page 282
Engendering Social Order: From Costume Autobiography to Conversation Games in Grimmelshausen’s Simpliciana......Page 284
The Poetics of Masquerade: Clothin gand the Construction of Social, Religious, and Gender Identity in Grimmelshausen’s
Simplicissimus......Page 314
“To see from these black lines”: The Mise en Livre of the Phoenix Copperplate and Other Grimmelshausen Illustrations......Page 348
The Search for Freedom: Grimmelshausen’s Simplician Weltanschauung......Page 374
CONTRIBUTORS
......Page 394
INDEX
......Page 398
