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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 Adventures of Simplicius Simplicissimus
'Gaudy, wild, raw, amusing, rollicking and ragged, boiling with life, on intimate terms with death and evil - but in the end, contrite and fully tired of a world wasting itself in blood, pillage and lust' Thomas Mann A story of war in all its absurdity and horror, this incomparable novel describes the fortunes of a young boy travelling through a world ravaged by conflict, and the terrible things he witnesses. Written by someone who fought in the Thirty Years War which decimated Europe in the seventeenth century, it combines brutal, documentary realism with fantastical, knockabout humour to depict a universe turned upside down. This pioneering work of fiction is considered to be the first great German novel. Translated by J. A. Underwood with an Introduction by Kevin Cramer
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.
Simplicissimus
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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...
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.
The Adventurous Simplicissimus
The Adventurous Simplicissimus is a picaresque novel of the Baroque style, written in 1668 by Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen and published the subsequent year. Inspired by the events and horrors of the Thirty Years' War which had devastated Germany from 1618 to 1648, it is regarded as the first adventure novel in the German language and the first German novel masterpiece. The full subtitle is "The life of an odd vagrant named Melchior Sternfels von Fuchshaim: namely where and in what manner he came into this world, what he saw, learned, experienced, and endured therein; also why he again left it of his own free will." 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.
