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Debra Prager FORTUNATUS: “Auß DEM KÜNIGREICH CIPERN”

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Debra Prager FORTUNATUS: “Auß DEM KÜNIGREICH CIPERN” Debra Prager FORTUNATUS: “AUß DEM KÜNIGREICH CIPERN” MAPPING THE WORLD AND THE SELF Summary In the first-stage prose novel Fortunatus, the eponymous protagonist travels the world from his home in Cyprus in search of success, adventure, and fulfillment. Assisted by a self-replenishing bag of money and by a magic hat, Fortunatus ventures first westward to Europe and then eastwards to Asia on a journey that is both internal and external, one that, in its telling, reflects a reassessment of the physical world and of the socio-economic reality of 16th-century life as well as the emergence in literature of the individual, the experiencing Self. The story of Fortunatus begins and ends in Cyprus, an island in the Mediterranean, and a nexus of trade and travel between West and East. From this pivotal space the narrator maps Fortunatus’ develop- ment as he travels first to Europe and then, again from Cyprus, to the Arab world and Asia. Strangely, however, the fact that this southern German novel has a Cypriot as its protagonist has piqued the curiosity of only a very few critics. And yet the choice to make Cyprus the center point of Fortunatus’ geographical — and psycho- logical — space is the critical narrative strategy behind the novel’s elaboration of its main concerns: money and travel along with the problems inherent to them, as well as the role of wish, desire, and fantasy in human subjectivity. Fortunatus explores the psychological consequences of being and seeing that which is alien: the problem of “foreignness” — of being a foreigner in a strange land and of alienation and isolation at home. All these themes are charted across a topographical grid that spans from the westernmost edges of Europe — as it is defined in this early prose novel — to the very farthest ends of the East, with Cyprus as the neutral point of depar- ture. Fortunatus was written by an unidentified author, published in 1509, and enjoyed best-seller status in its own time and in the centuries that followed. Printed by Johann Heybler at the commission of Daphnis 33 2004 124 Debra Prager Johann Otmar, Fortunatus appeared in twenty editions in the 16th century, eleven in the 17th and nine in the 18th century and was translated into thirteen languages. The Frankfurt bookseller Michel Harder marked in his Mess-Memorial at the 1569 Frankfurt Fastnachtsmesse that of all “Romane” sold, Fortunatus took first place with 198 copies (compared to Magelone with 176, Melusine with 158, and Octavian with 135).1 Fortunatus’ success derived not only from its melodramatic, poverty-to-riches plot, which resonated with a new reading audience of wealthy merchants and bankers, but also from a narrative that swept from the far reaches of one corner of the known world to the other. The story relates the globe-trotting adventures of Fortunatus, an impoverished patrician’s son from Cyprus, who, in the course of his journeys, acquires a magic purse from the “jungfraw des glücks” (Lady Luck) in the forests of Brittany and a magic hat which he steals from the Sultan of Egypt.2 Fortunatus merits critical attention not only because of its enduring popularity, but also because of its role as a transitional work — one that represented a new world through a still young genre, the prose narrative. The shift from the medieval to the modern era was well underway in Europe: The old feudal order had been steadily undermined by powerful princes and the merchant class; and travel, whether for profit, salvation, or exploration, had led to a reassessment of the world and the individual’s position within it. Scholarship on Fortunatus has tended to fall into four categories: the search for textual origins (i.e., when, where, and by whom Fortunatus was written); the identification of sources (which include the Gesta Romanorum, fairy tales, and contemporary travel itinerar- ies); as well as the interpretation of plot and motifs from a socio- economic perspective. Finally, a significant amount of study has been devoted to the analysis of Fortunatus as a first-stage prototype of the German novel. Recent approaches, which generally stress 1 See Marjatta Wis: Fortunatus. In: Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters. Verfasserlexikon. Vol. 2. Ed. Kurt Ruh. New York 1980, cols. 796-798, here col. 796. See also Marjatta Wis: Zum deutschen Fortunatus. Die mittelalterli- chen Pilger als Erweiterer des Weltbildes. In: Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 63 (1962), pp. 5-55, here p. 7. 2 Fortunatus. Studienausgabe nach der Editio Princeps von 1509. Ed. Hans-Gert Roloff. Stuttgart 1996. Daphnis 33 2004.
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