Till Eulenspiegel

Paul Oppenheimer is Professor of English and Medieval and Comparative Literature at City College, New York. He is the author of Birth of the Modern Mind, Evil and theDemonic, Intelligent Person's Guide to Modern Guilt, and Rubens, A Portrait.

• Selected Contents Introduction Bibliography Foreword 1. How Till Eulenspiegel was born, how he was baptized three times in one day, and who his godparents were. 2. How all the farmers and their wives complained about young Eulenspiegel, saying he was a rogue and a scoundrel; and how he rode behind his father on a horse, quietly letting the people behind him see his arse. 3. How Claus Eulenspiegel moved away from Kneitlingen to the Saale, the river, where his mother was born, where he died; and how his son Till learned to walk the tightrope. 4. How Eulenspiegel relieved the boys of 200 pairs of shoes, over which they fought, making young and old tear their hair over them. 5. How Eulenspiegel's mother tried to convince him to learn a trade-with which she meant to help him.

" His Adventures : indeed, Oppenheimer's translation, pleasantly illuminated with eighty-seven sixteenth-century woodcuts, is extremely readable. No doubt, this accesibility will enable a wide public, both academic and other, to encounter once more the 'original' Schwank in all his crude and bawdy tomfoolery." -- Ingrid De Smet, University of Warwick, Renaissance Journal