Defining The Genre Of Bonaventura’s Nachtwachen

Abstract

The enigmatic text of the anonymous Nachtwachen. Von Bonaventura has consistently baffled critics. Its meaning has largely remained elusive and its structure has resisted logical decoding. Yet most interpretative difficulties disappear when the text is considered as a menippean satire, the genre dealing with questions of life and death, and with the tragicomic reaction of mankind to the challenge they represent.The Nachtwachen fit easily into this tradition originating from Greek philosophy. This view is supported by the literary criticism of Northrop Frye, and particularly by that of the Russian Mikhail Bakhtin, who tabulated a number of generic characteristics and intellectual menippean conventions, all of which relate to Bonaventura’s text and reveal a veritable compendium of eighteenth‐century concerns. Though the identity of the author may remain in doubt, we have, therefore, to focus on a personality of quite unusual erudition and intelligence.