A Companion to the Works of Grimmelshausen

by Otto, Karl F., Jr.

• ISBN13: 9781571131843
• ISBN10: 1571131841
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-12-01
• Publisher: Camden House

Summary

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.a href="http://www.camden-house.com/pdfs/cwg.pdf">Click here to view the introduction/a>(PDF file 88KB)

Table of Contents

Illustrations	vii
Acknowledgments	ix
Chronological List of Grimmelshausen's Works and Their First English Translation	xi
Introduction	1	(24)
Karl F. Otto, Jr.
I. Basics
Problems in the Editions of Grimmelshausen's Works	25	(20)
Christoph E. Schweitzer
Grimmelshausen's ``Autobiographies'' and the Art of the Novel	45	(48)
Italo Michele Battafarano
Allegorical and Astrological Forms in the Works of Grimmelshausen with Special Emphasis on the Prophecy Motif	93	(54)
Klaus Haberkamm
Grimmelshausen and the Picaresque Novel	147	(20)
Christoph E. Schweitzer
Grimmelshausen's Ewig-wahrender Calender: A Labyrinth of Knowledge and Reading	167	(34)
Rosmarie Zeller
Grimmelshausen's Non-Simplician Novels	201	(30)
Andreas Solbach
In Grimmelshausen's Tracks: The Literary and Cultural Legacy	231	(38)
Dieter Breuer
II. Critical Approaches
Engendering Social Order: From Costume Autobiography to Conversation Games in Grimmelshausen's Simpliciana	269	(30)
Lynne Tatlock
The Poetics of Masquerade: Clothing and the Construction of Social, Religious, and Gender Identity in Grimmelshausen's Simplicissimus	299	(34)
Peter Hess
``To see from these black lines'': The Mise en Livre of the Phoenix Copperplate and Other Grimmelshausen Illustrations	333	(26)
Shannon Keenan Greene
The Search for Freedom: Grimmelshausen's Simplician Weltanschauung	359	(20)
Alan Menhennet
Notes on the Contributors	379	(4)
Index	383