Grimmelshausen the Storyteller

Johann Jakob von Grimmelshausen (1622-76) wished to be taken seriously as a writer, which by and large, in his own day, he was not. He was in fact the author of the first great German novel, Der abenthuerliche Simplicissimus(1688), out of which arose a kind of cycle of "Simplician" novels. Later generations have more than made up for this neglect, and established him as an accomplished satirist and profound allegorist, who confronted the temporal and eternal issues of the seventeenth century. But seriousness must not become monumental solemnity. This study acts out to show, principally through detailed textual analysis, that Grimmelshausen's "Simplician style" allows of the co-existence of general religious and moral concerns with a spontaneous response to the individual vitality, curiousness, and above all, humour of life, which is the motive force of true storytelling. In addition, while the constituent novels of the "Simplician Cycle" should be and are considered as separate entities, the author's claim that they should also be seen as a coherent whole cannot be brushed aside, and this becomes a progressively more important theme. Alan Menhennet (1933-2006) was professor of German at the University of Newcastle.