DER ABENTEUERLICHE SIMPLICIUS SIMPLICISSIMUS. DAS IST: AUSFÜHRLICHE UNERDICHTETE UND SEHR MERKWÜRDIGE LEBENSBESCHREIBUNG EINES EINFÄLTIGEN WUNDERLICHEN UND SELTSAMEN MENSCHEN, MELCHIOR STERNFELS VON FUCHSHEIM. Leipzig: Verlag von Otto Wigand, 1856. Small octavo, six books in one volume, pp. [1-2] [1-3] 4-130; [1-3] 4-156; [1-3] 4-136; [1-3] 4-128; [1-3] 4-139 [140: printer's imprint]; [1-5] 6-229 [230: printer's imprint], three-quarter brown leather and marbled boards, marbled endpapers. Later edition. First published in 1668 (although the title page was dated 1669), SIMPLICISSIMUS is the first adventure novel in the German language and the "only German novel of the seventeenth century which is actually read today by a broad public" (Monte Adair). Steven Moore (Novel: An Alternative History, 1600-1800 [New York: Bloomsbury, 2013], p, 61) calls it the greatest German novel of the 17th century. "For this work Grimmelshausen took as his model the picaresque romances of Spain, already to some extent known in Germany. SIMPLICISSIMUS has been interpreted as its author's autobiography; he begins with the childhood of his hero, and describes the latter's adventures amid the stirring scenes of the Thirty Years' War. The rustic detail with which these pictures are presented makes the book a valuable document of its time. For some, however, the later parts of the book overindulge in allegory, and finally become a Robinson Crusoe story. The historian Robert Ergang (The Myth of the All-Destructive Fury of the Thirty Years' War [Pocono Pines: The Craftsmen, 1956], p.7) draws upon Gustav Könnecke's Quellen und Forschungen zur Lebensgeschichte Grimmelshausens to assert that "the events related in the novel SIMPLICISSIMUS could hardly have been autobiographical since [Grimmelshausen] lived a peaceful existence in quiet towns and villages on the fringe of the Black Forest and that the material he incorporated in his work was not taken from actual experience, but was either borrowed from the past, collected from hearsay, or created by a vivid imagination." - Wikipedia. The book has been translated into English, most recently an unabridged translation in 2012 with a useful introduction and notes by Monte Adair, the translator. Leather rubbed, a sound, very good copy. (#157420).
Price: $250.00
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