The young boys mirror

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The young boys mirror. A beautiful Kurzwyligs booklet, From two young boys, one of a knight, the other of a builder Son is a novel by Jörg Wickram , which appeared in 1554.

action

The knight Gottlieb adopts the farmer's boy Fridbert and gives him, together with his biological son Willibald, to the young disciplinarian (private tutor) Felix for upbringing. Willibald, soon surpassed by the eager to learn Fridbert, begins to mess with the depraved butcher's son Lottarius and finally goes out into the world with him in wild companionship. Lottarius ends up on the gallows, while Willibald gets begged.

Fridbert, on the other hand, became chancellor after completing his studies, Felix even became a famous doctor. The lower Willibald sinks, the higher his antipodes rise to civil honors. One day the three meet again: Fridbert and Felix take Willibald, who has meanwhile become a wandering musician, into their service. After the penitent has obtained his father's forgiveness, he eventually becomes a righteous man, and as a gift he even holds a prestigious court office.

Interpretation and criticism

Willibald and Lottarius oppose the capable and respectable couple Felix and Fridbert as a terrifying example. Regardless of his undisguised joy over the success of the bourgeois sons, Wickram does not let the knight's son go to waste and thus proves himself to be a child of his time who, regardless of her reservations about the knighthood, treated it with respect. Wickram even tries a psychological interpretation of the young knight's misconduct: the people around him are to blame, especially his mother's foolish love, who made him a person of weak character.

The work has often been seen as the author's anti-nobility attitude, who advocates overcoming class barriers through individual performance. The popularity of the subject shows a considerable number of dramatizations.

expenditure

  • Strasbourg 1554
  • Cologne 1591
  • Tübingen 1901 (Gh. J. Bolte and W. Scheel)
  • Strasbourg 1917 (Ed. G. Fauth)

literature

  • Gudrun Bamberger: Poetology in the prose novel. Fortunatus - Wickram - Faustbuch , Würzburg 2018 (= Poetics and Episteme, Vol. 2), pp. 150–179.
  • Michael Mecklenburg: Mitigating circumstances? Didax and figure design in the Knabenspiegel and the Knabenspiegel game . In: Maria E. Müller, Ders. (Ed.): Forgotten texts - disguised looks. New perspectives in Wickram research , Frankfurt / Main et al. 2007, pp. 57–73.