The Winter Fool: Reflections on Daniel Kehlmann’s Tyll (2017/2020)
Keywords:
Tyll Eulenspiegel, Daniel Kehlmann, Georg Simmel, Walter Benjamin, tricksterAbstract
This paper uses a constellation of motifs and figures from the writings of Georg Simmel and Walter Benjamin to unfold the legendary character of Tyll Eulenspiegel as portrayed in Daniel Kehlmann’s Booker Prize-shortlisted novel, Tyll (2017; English translation 2020). A motley of trickster, acrobat, hoaxer and clown, Tyll is transplanted by Kehlmann from the fourteenth century into the midst of the Thirty Years War (1618-48) and plies his itinerant trade across the devastated territories of central Europe in a series of episodic and picaresque exploits and encounters. As a wandering will-’o’-the-wisp, the ‘daemonic character’ of Tyll is suggestive of a number of Simmelian social types and Benjaminian dramatis personae: the stranger, the adventurer, the ‘destructive character’ and, above all, the courtly intriguer. I suggest how Tyll intriguingly embodies various attributes and qualities of these figures and, at the same time, playfully eludes and elucidates such constructions and characterizations.
References
Benjamin W. (1985). The Origin of German Tragic Drama. London: Verso.
_____ (1996). Selected Writings Volume 1 1913-1926. Cambridge MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
_____ (1999). Selected Writings Volume 2 1927-1934. Cambridge MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
_____ (2002). Selected Writings Volume 3 1935-1938. Cambridge MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
_____ (2003). Selected Writings Volume 4 1938-1940. Cambridge MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Buci-Glucksmann C.(1994). Baroque Reason. The Aesthetics of Modernity. London: Sage.
Castiglione B. (1976). The Book of the Courtier. Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics.
Elias N. (1939/2020). The Civilising Process. Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations. Oxford: Blackwell’s.
Feber I. (2013). Philosophy and Melancholy: Benjamin’s Early Reflections on Theater and Language. Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press.
Frisby D., and M. Featherstone (Eds) (1997). Simmel on Culture. London: Sage.
Haase D. (2016). Folktales and Fairy Tales: Traditions and Texts from Around the World. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
Kehlmann D. (2020). Tyll. London: Riverrun, Quercus Editions.
Kehlmann D. and Z. Smith (2020). ‘Interview at 92 St. Y, New York’. Recorded 27th February 2020, posted on youtube 25th March 2020. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNqxKt6xrPk)
Kontje T. (2023). ‘Daniel Kehlmann’s Tyll: Historical Fiction for the Information Age’ in Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 64: 1, 98-110.
Kracauer S. (1995). The Mass Ornament. Weimar Essays. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Levine D. (Ed.) (1971). Georg Simmel: On Individuality and Social Forms. Selected Writings. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press.
Löwenthal L., and N. Guterman’s (1949/2021). Prophets of Deceit: A Study of the Techniques of the American Agitator. London: Verso.
Machaivelli N. (2011). The Prince. Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics.
Maeding L. (2020). ‘Eulenspiegel im Krieg: Der Narr und die Erzähltraditon in Daniel Kelhmanns Roman Tyll‘ in German Life and Letters 73:2 April 2020, 339-356.
Mantell H. (2020). The Mirror and the Light. London: Henry Holt.
Marotta V. (2012). ‘Georg Simmel, the Stranger and the Sociology of Knowledge’ in Journal of Intercultural Studies, Vol. 33, No. 6, 675-689.
Nägele R. (1991). Theater, Theory Speculation. Walter Benjamin and the Scenes of Modernity. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins Press.
Pensky M. (1993). Melancholy Dialectics. Walter Benjamin and the Play of Mourning. Amherst and Boston MA: University of Massachusetts Press.
Weber S. (2008). Benjamin’s -abilities. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.
Simmel Studies is published under a Creative Commons Attribution Licence 4.0.
With the licence CC-BY, authors retain the copyright, allowing anyone to download, reuse, re-print, modify, distribute and/or copy their contribution. The work must be properly attributed to its author.
It is not necessary to ask further permissions both to author or journal board.
