Johann Fischart


Fischart, Johann

 

Born 1546 or 1547 in Strasbourg; died 1590 in Forbach, Lotharingia. German satirist, publicist, and moralist.

Fischart, a Protestant, denounced the Catholic Church and the Jesuits and depicted the vices and virtues of the burghers. In his didactic work A Philosophical Booklet on Education for Marriage (1578) he advocated a strong family and sensible upbringing of children. In Geschichtsklitterung (1575), a free adaptation of the first book of F. Rabelais’s novel Gargantua and Pantagruel, Fischart demonstrated a verbal inventiveness, versatile erudition, and vividness of description of everyday life.

WORKS

In Russian translation:
In Khrestomatiia po zarubezhnoi literature: Epokha Vozrozhdeniia, vol. 2. Compiled by B. I. Purishev. Moscow, 1962.

REFERENCES

Istoriia nemetskoi literatury, vol. 1. Moscow, 1962.
Spengler, W. E. Johann Fischart. Göppingen, 1969.