Ysengrimus

This edition of the Ysengrimus is the first to offer the Latin text with a new German prose translation that preserves the sophistical style of the original while keeping an eye on readability. The animal epic, written in 3287 elegiac distichs, was composed around the middle of the 12th century in the region around Ghent and denounces the ecclesiastical and monastic conditions of its time in a sharp satire. The unknown author has a broad spectrum of humour at his disposal, ranging from simple wordplay to slapstick-like comedy of action and ironic language to bitter sarcasm. The hopeless world that is heading for the apocalypse is exposed to laughter, a laughter that borders on despair and threatens to get stuck in the throat. The author is a brilliant storyteller whose narrative potential anticipates some of the developments of modernity (slow motion, stream of consciousness). It is not surprising that this great text forms the starting point for the vernacular animal epic from the Old French Roman de Renart to the Middle Dutch Van den vos Reynaerde and the Middle Low German Reynke de vos to Goethe's Reineke Fuchs and the comic Fix und Foxi.

Michael Schilling, Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg.