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The shift from the medieval to the early-modern epoch had significant consequences for human behavior — consequences that are described by Norbert Elias (1939a, 1939b) in terms of greater affect control within an environment of increasing economic complexity and nontraditional forms of social interdependency. While Elias monitors this shift primarily in terms of books of manners, the purpose of this essay is to examine the Eulenspiegel text as a critical and contemporary reflection on this fundamental alteration in human behavior. Utilizing the insights of psychoanalysis, I believe it is possible to discern, in the tales making up the text, an “Eulenspiegelian” personality that has a remarkable coherence and that, with alterations, might have significance with respect to other times of epochal change (e.g., the early-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries).
After a brief review of the background of the tales, an analysis of the text will be presented. This will be followed by a psychoanalytic interpretation of the Eulenspiegelian personality, the deeper implications of which will be presented in the concluding part of the essay.
Whether or not there ever lived a real Eulenspiegel remains open to doubt and is ultimately of little import. What is significant is that the collection of tales that congealed around this quasi-mythical person became so very popular. Wunderlich (1984) talks of 80 editions between