dehumour1-3, Exercise 1: Four comic figures and works

Model answer (check each):

1. Till Eulenspiegel. Earliest printing: Strasbourg, around 1510 to 1511. Humour: the trickster who takes instructions literally. Legend stronger than evidence: the claim that he was a real man who lived in the early 1300s and died at Mölln; historians treat him as a folk figure.
2. Baron Münchhausen. Earliest printing: Raspe in English, 1785, then Bürger in German, 1786. Humour: the tall tale told with a straight face. Legend stronger than evidence: many stories attributed to the real Baron were added by the authors, and the real man did not write them.
3. Max und Moritz. First published 1865. Humour: comic cruelty in verse and drawing with a moral. Legend stronger than evidence: the claim that the story is an accurate picture of Busch's own views on children; it is a comic fiction.
4. Simplicissimus. Founded in Munich in 1896. Humour: political and social satire in drawings and text. Legend stronger than evidence: the idea that the 1898 case was only about the Kaiser; the details of sentences and the roles of the publisher and artists should be checked.

Point: for each, separate the printed work, the author's role and the legend that grew around it.