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Simplicissimus, the German Adventurer
John C. Osborne's hitherto unpublished translation, Simplicissimus , The German Adventurer, by Hans Jacob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen, is now available to an English-speaking audience worldwide. A searing coming to terms with the Thirty Years' War and the chaos that it drew in its wake, this early novel is arguably the most important German literary work of the seventeenth century.
Adventures of a Simpleton
Simplex starts out in life as innocent as any child - even more so. But then the soldiers came. And Simplex takes his first stumbling step out into the wide world. He is pressed into service as a court jester and carried off by the Croats. He fights in the war, now on this side, now on that. As a fancy-free lighthearted gallant, he slips into a pretty girl's boudoir only to be escorted from it the same night as a trapped and heavyhearted husband. He acquires great wealth by robbery and sinks into poverty out of magnanimity.
The Adventurous Simplicissimus
The novel follows a boy from the Spessart named Simplicius in the Holy Roman Empire during the 30 Years War as he grows up in the depraved environment and joins the armies of both warring sides, switching allegiances several times. Born to an illiterate peasant family, he is separated from his home by foraging dragoons and is eventually adopted by a forest hermit. He is conscripted at a young age into service, and from there embarks on years of foraging, military triumph, wealth, prostitution, disease, travels to Russia, and countless other adventures.
The Life of Courage
A companion volume to Simplicissimus: the story of young girl named Courage, caught up in the turmoil of the Thirty Years' War, who survives, even prospers, by the use of her native cunning and sexual attraction. Completely amoral, she flits through a succession of husbands and lovers and ends her life with a band of Gypsies. The conceit here is that Courage supposedly tells her story to get back at Simplicissimus, who treats her dismissively in his own memoirs. This is a remorseless tale of lechery, knavery and trickery.
Courage, The Adventuress and The False Messiah
Grimmelshausen's enduring fame as Germany’s greatest satirical novelist has rested mainly on The Adventerous Simplicissimus, the first of four novels comprising the Simplician cycle. Less well known, though of equal interest for their penetrating and satiric insight into seventeenth-century beliefs and superstitions, are the two Simplician tales now made available to English readers in this edition: Courage, The Adventuress, the fictional biography of a camp follower in the Thirty Years War, a grimly humorous tale told in the earthy language of the people; and The False Messiah, comprising nine chapters from Grimmelshausen’s last work, The Enchanted Bird’s Nest, Part II. The book inclu...
Simplicissimus
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Tearaway
'The author', the ageing Simplicissimus and his former comrade Tearaway (a character from Simplicissimus) happen to meet in a village inn. First of all 'the author' describes how he was caught by Courage and her band of gypsies and conned into writing her life-story for her. In the main part of the novel, Tearaway then recounts his adventurous life, which takes him through the horrors of the Thirty Years' War and then to Hungary to fight against the Turks, later to Italy and Greece. He ends up as a one-legged fiddler, travelling round Germany, playing, begging, stealing and cheating. The narrative includes tales of trickery, sorcery and magic, some revolving round Tearaway's wife, who discovers a magic bird's nest which makes her invisible and which she uses it for various escapades, including cuckolding Tearaway, until she is caught and killed. Despite the fantastic elements of some episodes, the novel is told in the same down-to-earth, often earthy style of Grimmelshausen's other novels.
Courage, the Adventuress and the False Messiah
Grimmelshausen's enduring fame as Germany's greatest satirical novelist has rested mainly on The Adventerous Simplicissimus, the first of four novels comprising the Simplician cycle. Less well known, though of equal interest for their penetrating and satiric insight into seventeenth-century beliefs and superstitions, are the two Simplician tales now made available to English readers in this edition: Courage, The Adventuress, the fictional biography of a camp follower in the Thirty Years War, a grimly humorous tale told in the earthy language of the people; and The False Messiah, comprising nine chapters from Grimmelshausen's last work, The Enchanted Bird's Nest, Part II. The book includes an...
The Continuation of Simplicissimus
The Continuation of Simplicissimus is Grimmelshausen's Prilgrim's progress, the concluding chapter in one of the greatest and most acclaimed German novels. As in his other books, Grimmelshausen's fourth Simplician novel combines fantastic episodes with a realistic narrative style.
A Companion to the Works of Grimmelshausen
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 increa...
