Mother Courage (German ''Mutter Courage'') is a character from a
Grimmelshausen novel ''Lebensbeschreibung der Ertzbetrügerin und Landstörtzerin Courasche'' (''The Runagate Courage'') dating from around 1670. The character had played a
cameo role in ''
Der abentheuerliche Simplicissimus'' in 1669.
The
Bertolt Brecht
Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known as Bertolt Brecht and Bert Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a p ...
play ''Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder'' (''
Mother Courage and Her Children'') gave her currency in the 20th century. Mother Courage is cast as a walking contradiction by Brecht. She is torn between protecting her children from the war and making a profit out of the war.
Cúruisce (Courasche) appears in Ireland as a fictional character in
Darach Ó Scolaí's Irish language novel ''
An Cléireach''. After travelling from Flanders in the company of a junior officer in the Tyrone regiment she serves in 1650 as a camp follower of the regiment of colonel Edmund O'Flaherty in the Royalist army.
References
Sources
*Cara M. Horwich (1997), ''Survival in Simplicissimus and Mutter Courage''
*John W. Jacobson, ''A Defense of Grimmelshausen's Courasche'', The German Quarterly, Vol. 41, No. 1 (Jan., 1968), pp. 42–54
Characters in German novels
Characters in plays
Fictional characters introduced in the 1660s
Female characters in literature
Female characters in theatre
Fictional German people
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