Epic · A way to begin
The Legend of the Glorious Adventures of Tyl Ulenspiegel
La Légende d'Ulenspiegel et de Lamme Goedzak
Charles de Coster · 1867
Synopsis
Flanders, in the sixteenth century. Thyl Ulenspiegel, born in Damme, is a prankster whom persecution turns into a rebel: when his father Claes, declared a heretic, is burned, he gathers his ashes in a small bag that he wears on his chest and sets off to fight Spanish oppression. Lamme Goedzak, stout and fond of good living, accompanies him while searching for his wife, whose trace he has lost. The two men carry on their pranks and the war side by side, as far as the Sea Beggars.
Context
The book took about ten years of work and was published in Brussels in December 1867, by the Librairie internationale. Its language, an archaizing French forged in the tradition of Rabelais, has been the subject of dedicated studies. Long neglected in Belgium, it was recognised only by the Jeune Belgique generation, some twenty years later, before becoming, according to an often-quoted phrase, the bible of Flanders.
Who it is for
Long, episodic, and written in a deliberately archaic language that takes a while to get used to; it reads very well in separate chapters.
Prizes and reception
Ignored when it appeared, it was later translated into every language of Europe; two films were made from it, one Franco-East German in 1956, the other Soviet twenty years later.
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