Johann Fischart was the most important writer of German in the last third of the sixteenth century. His many works in prose and verse, representing various literary genres and types, engage important political and religious issues of the day as well as answer the need of a cultured elite for entertainment. His virtuosity with language is rooted in a native fascination with phonology, morphology, etymology, borrowings, and lendings but is disciplined by a thorough training in rhetoric and poetics. The density and difficulty of his style, combined with the topicality of many of his subjects and allusions, give his work little appeal to modern readers. Fischart is not widely known in English-speaking countries.

Born in Strasbourg in 1546 or 1547, Fischart often placed the initials G. M., for genannt Menzer (called From Mainz), after his own to form a pen name indicating his family's place of origin. Because of the...