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Till Eulenspiegel: His Adventures

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One does not ordinarily think of Renaissance literature as easy reading--at least I don't--but this book is. 95 chapters in 191 pages should not exhaust anyone. For the more serious reader, there is a translator's introduction with pages numbered up to lxxxiii.

There may have been a few Till Eulenspiegel stories which were not included in the nanuscript which is herein translated. I remember reading "Tricky Tales" (B000HTJFJG), which includes one story which is not in this collection and another story which is in a different version.

For some of the stories, one finds parallels with later writings. In one story, Eulenspiegel presents himself as a painter. He leaves a canvas blank and pretends that his work can only be seen by a person of legitimate birth. Hans Christian Anderson might have borrowed the idea for his Royal Weavers. In other stories, our hero takes a job as an apprentice and interprets his employer's instructions literally. This could be the inspiration for the Amelia Bedelia stories.

In a few instances, the stories have philosophical implications. In Chapter 28, oru clever rogue poses as a scholar. The university personnel sets up an oral examination. One question is "Where is the center of the world?" He answers, "On the spot where I am standing. If you measure with a string, you will see that I am right." Another question is "How large is Heaven?" He answers with an exact figure and adds, "If you go up there and measure the sun and moon and stars, you will see that I am right."

The trick here was to shift the burden of proof onto the other side. Creationists tend to be masters at this maneuver. If the Creationists run Evolutionists ragged defending real or imagined gaps in the fossil record, the Evolutionists might forget to ask for a radiometric instrument which stops at 4004 BC and indicates a world-wide flood in 2348 BC.

J. Michael has a point, though: the excrement jokes run stale after a while.