Fischart, Johann
Fischart, Johann
(yō`hän fĭsh`ärt), b. 1548, d. 1590 or 1591, German satirist and moralist. He lived in Strasbourg. He translated and paraphrased works by Rabelais called Geschichtsklitterung (1572, 1575, and 1590); by the Dutch writer Philip van Marnix, Bienenkorb [the beehive] (1579); and from a French source, Jesuiterhütlein [Jesuit's hat] (1580). Among his many works his versification of Till EulenspiegelEulenspiegel, Till[Ger.,=owl-mirror, hence English Owlglass], a north German peasant clown of the 14th cent. who was immortalized in chapbooks describing his practical jokes on clerics and townsfolk. The first Till chapbook (c.
..... Click the link for more information. stories and his narrative poem Das Glückhafft Schiff von Zürich [the lucky boat of Zürich] (1576) are noteworthy. Fischart's writings are largely political and anti-Catholic polemics, witty and original.
Fischart, Johann
Born 1546 or 1547 in Strasbourg; died 1590 in Forbach, Lotharingia. German satirist, publicist, and moralist.
Fischart, a Protestant, denounced the Catholic Church and the Jesuits and depicted the vices and virtues of the burghers. In his didactic work A Philosophical Booklet on Education for Marriage (1578) he advocated a strong family and sensible upbringing of children. In Geschichtsklitterung (1575), a free adaptation of the first book of F. Rabelais’s novel Gargantua and Pantagruel, Fischart demonstrated a verbal inventiveness, versatile erudition, and vividness of description of everyday life.
WORKS
In Russian translation:In Khrestomatiia po zarubezhnoi literature: Epokha Vozrozhdeniia, vol. 2. Compiled by B. I. Purishev. Moscow, 1962.
REFERENCES
Istoriia nemetskoi literatury, vol. 1. Moscow, 1962.Spengler, W. E. Johann Fischart. Göppingen, 1969.