Till Eulenspiegel, with owl and mirror (Straßburg edition of 1515)

Till Eulenspiegel (IPA: [tɪl ˈʔɔʏlənˌʃpiːgəl], Low Saxon: Dyl Ulenspegel IPA: [dɪl ˈʔuːlnˌspɛɪgl̩]) was an impudent trickster figure who originated in the Middle Low German folklore and was disseminated in popular printed editions narrating the string of lightly-connected episodes that outlined his picaresque career, primarily in Germany, the Low Countries and France. He made his entrance in English-speaking culture late, in the nineteenth century.

"General opinion now tends to regard Till Eulenspiegel as an entirely imaginary figure around whose name was gathered a cycle of tales popular in the Middle Ages," Ruth Michaelis-Jena observes^[1] "Yet legendary figures need a definite background to make them memorable and Till needed the reality of the Braunschweig landscape and real towns to which he could travel—Cologne, Rostock, Bremen and Marburg among them—and whose burghers become the victims of his pranks."

According to the tradition, he was born in Kneitlingen near Braunschweig in 1300. He travelled through the Holy Roman Empire, especially Northern Germany, but also the Low Countries, Bohemia, and Italy. In the legend, he is presented as a trickster or fool who played practical jokes on his contemporaries, exposing vices at every turn, greed and folly, hypocrisy and foolishness. "The fulcrum of his wit in a large number of the tales is his literal interpretation of figurative language."^[2] Although craftsmen are featured as the main victims of his pranks, neither the nobility nor the pope are exempt from being fooled by him. While he is unlikely to have been based on a historic person, by the sixteenth century Eulenspiegel was said to have died in Mölln, near Lüneburg, of the Black Death in 1350, according to a gravestone attributed to him there, which was noted by Fynes Moryson in his Itinerary, 1591.^[3] "Don't move this stone, let that be clear - Eulenspiegel's buried here^[4]" is written on the stone in Low German.

The two earliest printed editions,^[5] in Early New High German, Ein kurtzweilig lesen von Dyl Ulenspiegel, are Johannes Grüninger's in Strassburg, 1510-11 and 1515.^[6] In spite of often-repeated suggestions to the effect "that the name 'Eulenspiegel' was used in tales of rogues and liars in Lower Saxony as early as 1400",^[7] previous references to a Till Eulenspiegel actually turn out to be surprisingly elusive, Paul Oppenheimer concludes.^[8] The authorship is attributed to Hermann Bote. Puns that do not work in High German indicate that the book was written in Low German first and translated into High German in order to find a larger audience.

The literal translation of the High German name gives "owl mirror", two symbols that identify Till Eulenspiegel in crude popular woodcuts (illustration). However, the original Low German is believed to be ul'n Spegel, meaning "wipe the arse". In the eighteenth century, German satirists adopted episodes for social satire, and in the nineteenth and early twentieth-century versions of the tales are bowdlerized, to render them fit for children, who had come to be considered their chief natural audience, by expurgating their many references to human excrement.^[9]

The book has been translated, usually in mutilated versions, into many languages.

See also

• The Legend of Thyl Ulenspiegel and Lamme Goedzak, an 1867 novel by Charles De Coster
• Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche, a tone poem by Richard Strauss, 1894-95), Op. 28.
• a 1916 ballet by the Ballets Russes, see Vaslav Nijinsky
• a verse by Gerhart Hauptmann, titled Till Eulenspiegel (1927)
• Nasreddin, Medieval Middle Eastern literature has a character similar to Eulenspiegel
• Hershele Ostropoler, an early-19th-century Jewish prankster similar in character to Eulenspiegel
• Hitar Petar, Bulgarian character similar to Eulenspiegel

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Till Eulenspiegel

• German translation of the 1510 book
• Till Eulenspiegel Museum
• Two example Eulenspiegel Stories translated to English among others
• Till Eulenspiegel the merry prankster by John M. Gaustad and Walt Vogdes http://www.steincollectors.org/library/articles/Eulenspiegel/Eulenspiegel
• Rock band, based in Perm', Russia

Footnotes

1. ^ Ruth Michaelis-Jena, "Eulenspiegel and Münchhausen: Two German Folk Heroes", Folklore 97.1 (1986:101-108) p. 102.
2. ^ Peter E. Carels, "Eulenspiegel and Company Visit the Eighteenth Century" Modern Language Studies 10.3 (Autumn 1980:3-11) p. 3.
3. ^ John A. Walz, "Fynes Moryson and the Tomb of Till Eulenspiegel" Modern Language Notes 42.7 (November 1927:465-466) p 465; Walz quotes Moryson's description of "a famous Jester Oulenspiegell (whom we call Owlyglasse)": "the towns-men yeerly keepe a feast for his memory, and yet show the apparell he was wont to weare." The earliest reference to the gravestone is of the mid-sixteenth century, in Riemar Kock's Lübscher Chronik. By the seventeenth century it was noted as "often renewed".
4. ^ “Disen Stein sol nieman erhaben. Hie stat Ulenspiegel begraben. Anno domini MCCCL jar” (Diesen Stein soll niemand erhaben, hier steht Eulenspiegel begraben; http://www.eulenwelt.de/interessantes_eulenspiegel.htm)
5. ^ Fragmentary manuscripts of ca. 1510 were found by Honegger, and an almost complete manuscript of Grüninger's 1510-11 edition by Paul Ulrich hucker in 1975 (Paul Oppenheimer, Till Eulenspiegel: His Adventures" (1991), Introduction, p. xxix).
6. ^ The early editions have been translated by Paul Oppenheimer as A Pleasant Vintage of Till, Eulenspiegel (Wesleyan University Press) 1972, with introduction and critical apparatus; Oppenheimer, Till Eulenspiegel: His Adventures was published in the Garland Library of Medieval Literature, 1991
7. ^ Michaelis-Jena 1986:102.
8. ^ Oppenheimer 1991, Introduction, p. xxx.
9. ^ Carels 1980.