Novel of Entertainment During the Gallant Era: Study of the Novels of August Bohse

In response to the rise of the gallant world, the late seventeenth-century author and teacher August Bohse invented the gallant novel. Writing under the pseudonym Talander, he modernized the courtly-historic novel by abandoning its scholarly and transcendental themes in favor of love stories interspersed with instruction on gallant behavior. This approach combined with Bohse’s interest in modernizing the German language to cause his contemporaries to accuse him of immorality while at the same time they embraced his stylistic innovations. The present study discusses Bohse’s attitude toward the novel-genre as well as the contents, structure, narrative devices and didactic elements of his own works. Also considered are the situation of the late seventeenth-century author in Germany and the context within which Bohse wrote.