Tale
Ulenspieghel
Not translated into English
Anonymous · 1519
Synopsis
A series of short, independent tales follows Ulenspiegel, a prankster vagabond, from town to town. He takes literally the orders he is given and the proverbs he is served, plays tricks on clerics and merchants, takes revenge on those who have duped him and stops at no vulgarity. The forty-six chapters, a few pages each, follow one another with no overall plot.
Context
The book adapts into Dutch a German collection printed in Strasbourg around 1510 by Johannes Grüninger, whose author remains unknown; the translator, also anonymous, worked from a lost edition and left out the stories that were too similar. The oldest surviving edition, in Copenhagen, has a disputed date, between 1512 and 1525. It has forty-six chapters, which take up fifty-one German tales. The book was reprinted in Antwerp in 1575 and in 1580, and the Index of 1570 mentions it. Three centuries later, Charles De Coster made the character a Flemish symbol, in a novel published in 1867.
Who it is for
A series of short farces, often coarse, with no overall progression. To be read in small pieces.
Prizes and reception
Circulated throughout Europe from the sixteenth century, to the point that the French word espiègle comes from the name of its hero.