REPRESENTATIONS OF THE UNINTERRUPTED AND GROTESQUE CARNIVAL CELEBRATION IN TWO UTOPIAS OF SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY GERMANY

In 1640, Utopia, the homonymous work of Thomas More, written by Jakob Bidermann, German Jesuit and Inquisitor of the Catholic Church in Rome, was published. The author, an active member of the Tridentine Culture, wrote the text in Latin with the didactic purpose of teaching moral example to his students at the Jesuit College in the city of Augsburg. In 1677, Christoph von Andreas Hod von Waltersdorf, of whom little is known, translated the text from Latin into German, and published it under the title Bacchusia oder Fastnachtland. Except for some differences between the original work and its translation, the text recounts the journey of three friends to an imaginary land where the inhabitants celebrate an eternal carnival, chaos is institutionalized and the rules of good behavior are suspended.