Abstract

In this article, we suggest a new reading of the Fincken Ritter, a pamphlet published anonymously in 1560. Due to its impossible content as well as its wild juxtaposition of genre traditions, motifs, and topoi, this text is commonly classified as nonsense poetry. In contrast to previous scholarship, which predominantly focused on aspects of decomposition of meaning, we argue that a new perspective opens up when looking at the body as a central motif: The corporeality of the eponymous hero grants vividness to the presentation, derivation, and practicing of inherent logics at the level of narrative devices. Not only has the hero to prove himself in a topsy-turvey world before he can be born. The narration also develops step by step, and in close inspection of traditional models, it creates a world with its own rules and laws. This argument is developed at three moments of the multifaceted corporeality: The hero’s quest for food suggests a reinterpretation of the model of metabolism as a connection to preexisting material and tradition. In the hero’s drastic disfigurements, the first-person narrative gains authorial latitude between experiencing and narrating the self. Finally, models of text reproduction and circulation are envisioned through bodies of sound. All three body exercises aim to explore the relationship between narratorial position and the world that depends on it. Thus, the hero’s figura becomes a figure of poetological reflection for the whole text.