Till Eulenspiegel. His Adventures. Translated with an introduction and
notes by Paul Oppenheimer (New York and London: Routledge, 2001),
ISBN 0415937620 (hbk) and 0415937639 (pbk)
With his adventures translated into Dutch, English, French, Latin, Danish,
Polish, Czech and probably Italian within three-quarters of a century after
they were first published, Till Eulenspiegel is a character of truly European
proportions and lasting appeal. The product of that transitional period from
the Late Middle Ages to the Renaissance, ‘Howleglas’ helped shape the
humanist world of laughter, so dear to Mikhail Bakhtin; he belongs to a
long line of subversive and satirical figures that includes the Rabelaisian
giants Gargantua and Pantagruel, as well as the Spanish picaro, and that
would continue with the anti-heroes of comic prose fiction, such as Charles
Sorel’s Francion, the jest biographies of Richard Tarlton or John Scogin, or
Grimmelshausen’s Simplicissimus. Indeed, the German prankster’s life
story is a compilation of farcical, scatological episodes, far removed from
the sanitized versions and interpretations, often destined for children,
through which the folkloristic Eulenspiegel is still best known today (even
though there is now also a growing tendency to associate the name
Eulenspiegel gratuitously with erotic scurrility).
Oppenheimer’s modern English translation returns to the earliest
sixteenth-century editions, above all Grüninger’s 1515 edition (of which the
sole surviving copy is in the British Library). The translation itself has been
‘extensively revised’ since its first publication in 1972. So too has the
introduction, ‘to take account of recent scholarship’: thus, apart from
considering questions of artistic achievement, enduring influence, and so
on, Oppenheimer provides a detailed examination of the case of Hermann
Bote’s supposed authorship of the book, to conclude that the attribution
remains unproven.
It is perhaps worth pointing out that the bibliography, albeit updated
with a number of books and articles, is rather thin on the latest research
concerning popular culture and the role of humour and laughter in sixteenthcentury Europe. It makes no mention either of Martin M. Winkler’s edition
of the Latin version (Der lateinische Eulenspiegel des Ioannes Nemius,
Tübingen, 1995), or indeed of any of the websites devoted to the legendary
tale and its eponymous character. These are negligible sins of omission,
however, which in no way detract from the main quality of Till
Eulenspiegel.
His Adventures:
indeed, Oppenheimer’s translation,
pleasantly illuminated with eighty-seven sixteenth-century woodcuts, is
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extremely readable. No doubt, this accessibility will enable a wide public,
both academic and other, to encounter once more the ‘original’ Schwank in
all his crude and bawdy tomfoolery.
Ingrid A. R. De Smet
University of Warwick
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