Il picaro nella cultura europea

American Germanists may easily overlook interesting or valuable material that appears in (to them) unexpected places. The present volume contains, in revised form, the papers presented at the third symposium (1986) organized by Battafarano at the University of Trent (Italy). […] Battafarano’s “Picari simpliciani tedeschi” ranges widely over the disparate sources of Grimmelshausen’s work and the adaption of the those sources to his peculiar aims. Battafarano deals not only with Spanish sources, but also with the German tradition (including Albertinus), with that much-used source-book of Garzoni, and so on. […] Clearly, the book, and of course the symposium that produced it, concentrated on Spanish and German literature. […] Both the papers dealing with German literature and those dealing with the Spanish picaresque literature offer stimulating views to any scholar interested in the picaresque tradition. (W. G. Marigold, Germanic Notes and Reviews)