The title page of Heutelia

Heutelia is a German book about a journey through Switzerland, published anonymously in Paris in 1658,[1] and attributed to Hans Franz Veiras. It is notable as a work of baroque literature and as a critical account of social conditions in seventeenth-century Switzerland.

The book consists of 297 octavo pages. The book has been incorrectly ascribed to Jakob von Graviseth.[2]

The title, Heutelia, is an anagram of Helvetia, the Latin name of Switzerland (U and V were considered the same letter). The invented name also evokes the Greek adjective εὔθηλος (euthēlos) meaning "with a full udder," thus playing on stereotypes of the Swiss as a nation of cowherds.[3]

References

  1. ↑ The titlepage of the edition shows a satyr holding an engraved slab saying Lvtetiae Anno MDCLVIII and the motto Veritas odium parit, cf. the digitised copy of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Munich.
  2. ↑ Friederich, Werner Paul (1937), "Jakob von Graviseth's Heutelia", PMLA, vol. 52, pp. 1062–1071.
  3. ↑ Gemert, Guillaume van (1998), "Kuhschweizer und Butterfresser. Schweizer Befindlichkeit und Leitbilder schweizerischer Zukunftsorientierung in Hans Franz Veiras' Heutelia (1658)", in Enklaar, Jattie; Ester, Hans (eds.), Vivat Helvetia: Die Herausforderung einer nationalen Identität, Amsterdam: Rodopi, pp. 127–128, ISBN 978-90-420-0674-4
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