C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Johann Fischart (1546–1590)
Fischart, Johann (fish’ärt). A famous German satirist (1546–90). Among his compositions in verse may be mentioned: ‘The Jester in Rhyme,’ a satire on the Dominicans and Franciscans (1571); ‘Description of the Four-Cornered Hat’ (1580), against the Jesuits; the ‘Flöhhatz Weibertratz’ (1573), in which he describes a contest at law between fleas and women; ‘Podagramic Book of Consolation’ (1577), showing how the gout (podagra) spares the laboring poor and kindly chastens the rich, while leaving their minds free for wit and humor; ‘The Hive of the Holy Roman Swarm’ (1579). In imitation of Rabelais’s ‘Gargantua,’ but giving free play to his own native humor and wit, he wrote of ‘The Wondrous Deeds, Thoughts, and Words of the Famous Heroes and Lords Grandgusier, Gargantua, and Pantagruel’ (1575).