Narrative Arrangement in 16th-Century Till Eulenspiegel Texts: The Reinvention of Familiar Structures

Abstract

The popular trickster character Till Eulenspiegel first appeared in the prose novel Ein kurtzweilig Lesen von Dil Ulenspiegel (1511/1515). Once in printed form, he caught the attention of two German-language authors, Hans Sachs and Johann Fischart. The former wrote comical poems and Shrove Tuesday plays centered on Eulenspiegel; the latter devoted an epic, Eulenspiegel reimenweis (1572), to the character. In all three cases, a proper understanding of the adaptation of Eulenspiegel-stories depends on a knowledge of the current literary contexts. Lesen holds a superficial resemblance to fool literature, but Eulenspiegel’s modus operandi is more reminiscent of trickster narratives as known from all over the world. His biography is a similar case of misdirection: although the chapter arrangement derives from hagiographic tradition, the redactor of S1515 uses the tactic to create a book meant to be flipped through at leisure, like a modern joke collection. Sachs’s and Fischart’s adaptions are also instances of authorial bait-and-switch: Sachs adopts Eulenspiegel as a tool to introduce other characters or themes, and Fischart’s Eulenspiegel reimenweis reinvents a biographical form developed in his earlier polemics. In all three examples, the traditional stories of Eulenspiegel serve as the basis for experimentation with an established narrative structure. Eulenspiegel, as a character, is never explored in depth: instead, the authors use familiar pranks as raw material to attract the readers’ interest and reinvent a storytelling form for their own purposes. Eulenspiegel is a case of design irony, of the use of known structures in experimental ways. Such findings are important for the history of fiction, as they reveal a new understanding of character as a means to address formal phenomena.