![]() The later sections of the novel, however, struggle to hold the reader’s interest and after being totally absorbed in the tale of Tyll’s village, the reader is likely to feel lost in the many courtrooms, battlefields and the variety of landscapes that appear one after another. Tyll by Daniel Kehlmann, Pantheon, Rs 2,075 In the figure of Eulenspiegel, the individual gets back at society the stupid yet cunning peasant demonstrates his superiority to the narrow, dishonest, condescending townsman, as well as to the clergy and nobility.” The jests and practical jokes, which generally depend on a pun, are broadly farcical, often brutal, sometimes obscene but they have a serious theme. ![]() As the entry on Tyll in the Encyclopaedia Britannica explains: “The earliest extant text is Ein kurtzweilig Lesen von Dyl Vlenspiegel (Antwerp, 1515 ‘An Amusing Book About Till Eulenspiegel’) the sole surviving copy is in the British Library, London. ![]() For those who are not familiar with Tyll Eulenspiegel (his last name means ‘owl mirror’), he is a figure from German legend who is famous for his tricks, witty jests and practical jokes that border on the scatological even. Of course, Richard Strauss’s unforgettable tone poems probably introduced Tyll to classical music aficionados. ![]() Tyll, Daniel Kehlmann’s biographical novel on Tyll Eulenspiegel, the picaresque German trickster hero, is a rich retelling of the stories that have come down to us from medieval chapbooks and nineteenth-century reconstructions that connected the protagonist to the Reformation. ![]()
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