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Till Eulenspiegel ((:tɪl ˈʔɔʏlənˌʃpiːɡəl), Low Saxon: ''Dyl Ulenspegel'' ) is an impudent trickster figure originating in Middle Low German folklore. His tales were disseminated in popular printed editions narrating a string of lightly connected episodes that outlined his picaresque career, in Germany, Denmark, The Low Countries, Bohemia, Poland, and Italy. He made his main entrance in English-speaking culture late in the nineteenth century as "Owlglass". However, he was first mentioned in English literature by Ben Jonson in his comedic play ''The Alchemist'', or even earlier ''Owleglasse'' by Henry Porter in ''The Two Angry Women of Abington'' (1599). ==Origin and tradition== According to the tradition, Eulenspiegel was born in Kneitlingen near Brunswick around 1300. He travelled through the Holy Roman Empire, especially Northern Germany, but also the Low Countries, Bohemia, and Italy. His mobility as a ''Landfahrer'' ("vagrant") allows him to be envisaged anywhere and everywhere in the late Middle Ages. Since the early 19th century, many German scholars have made attempts to find historical evidence of Till Eulenspiegel's existence. In his 1980 book ''Till Eulenspiegel'', historian Bernd Ulrich Hucker mentions that according to a contemporary legal register of the city of Brunswick one ''Till van Cletlinge'' ("Till from/of Kneitlingen") was incarcerated there in the year 1339, along with four of his accomplices, for highway robbery.〔Hucker, Bernd Ulrich (1980). ''Till Eulenspiegel: Beiträge zur Forschung'', Brunswick: Stadtarchiv und Stadtbibliothek, 1980〕 While he is unlikely to have been based on a historic person, by the sixteenth century, Eulenspiegel was said to have died in Mölln, near Lübeck and Hamburg, of the Black Death in 1350, according to a gravestone attributed to him there, which was noted by Fynes Moryson in his ''Itinerary'', 1591.〔John A. Walz, "Fynes Moryson and the Tomb of Till Eulenspiegel" ''Modern Language Notes'' 42.7 (November 1927:465-466) p 465; Walz quotes Moryson's description of "a famous Jester Oulenspiegell (whom we call Owlyglasse)": "the towns-men yeerly keepe a feast for his memory, and yet show the apparell he was wont to weare." The earliest reference to the gravestone is of the mid-sixteenth century, in Riemar Kock's ''Lübscher Chronik''. By the seventeenth century it was noted as "often renewed".〕 "Don't move this stone, let that be clear Eulenspiegel's buried here"〔"Disen Stein sol nieman erhaben. Hie stat Ulenspiegel begraben. Anno domini MCCCL jar" (Diesen Stein soll niemand erhaben, hier steht Eulenspiegel begraben; (Eulenwelt - Eulen und Käuze: Till Eulenspiegel ))〕 is written on the stone in Low German. In the stories, he is presented as a trickster who plays practical jokes on his contemporaries, exposing vices at every turn, greed and folly, hypocrisy and foolishness. As Peter Carels notes, "The fulcrum of his wit in a large number of the tales is his literal interpretation of figurative language."〔Peter E. Carels, "Eulenspiegel and Company Visit the Eighteenth Century" ''Modern Language Studies'' 10.3 (Autumn 1980:3-11) p. 3.〕 In these stories, anything that can go wrong in communication does go wrong due to the disparity in consciousness. And it is not the exception that communication gives rise to complications; rather, it is the rule. As a model of communication, Till Eulenspiegel is the inherent, unpredictable factor of complication that can throw any communication, whether with oneself or others, into disarray. These irritations, amounting to conflicts, have the potential of effecting mental paradigm changes and increases in the level of consciousness. Although craftsmen are featured as the principal victims of his pranks, neither the nobility nor the pope is exempt from being affected by him. Many others of Till's pranks are scatological in nature, and involve tricking people into touching, smelling, or even eating Till's excrement.〔http://german.about.com/od/literature/a/Till-Eulenspiegel.htm〕 "General opinion now tends to regard Till Eulenspiegel as an entirely imaginary figure around whose name was gathered a cycle of tales popular in the Middle Ages," Ruth Michaelis-Jena observes.〔Ruth Michaelis-Jena, "Eulenspiegel and Münchhausen: Two German Folk Heroes", ''Folklore'' 97.1 (1986:101-108) p. 102.〕 "Yet legendary figures need a definite background to make them memorable and Till needed the reality of the Braunschweig landscape and real towns to which he could travel Cologne, Rostock, Bremen and Marburg among them and whose burghers become the victims of his pranks." Rudolf Steiner writes of the philosophical implications of the legend ''in extenso'' in a published 1918 lecture. As part of a stream of consciousness put in the mouth of the character Isis, he observes, for example: "What modern humanity should take as the true remedy for its abstract spirit is depicted on a tombstone in Moelln in the Lauenberg district... Scholars — and scholars are indeed very learned today and take everything with extraordinary gravity and significance — have naturally discovered — oh! they have discovered various things, for example, that Homer didn't really exist. The scholars have naturally also discovered that there was never a Till Eulenspiegel. One of the chief reasons why the actual bones of the actual Till Eulenspiegel (who was supposedly merely the representative of his age) are not supposed to lie beneath the tombstone in Lauenberg on which is depicted the owl with the looking glass, was that another tombstone had been found in Belgium upon which there was an owl with a mirror. Now these learned ones naturally have said — for it is logical, isn't it? (and if they are anything it is logical) — how does it go again in Shakespeare? For they are all honorable men, all, all, all! Logical they all are! — anyway, so they said: ''If the same sign is found in Lauenberg and in Belgium, then naturally Eulenspiegel never existed at all.''"〔Rudolf Steiner, "Lecture Three: 6 January 1918", published in ''Ancient Myths and the New Isis Mystery''.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Till Eulenspiegel」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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