Schiffbruch! Drei Selbstzeugnisse von Kaufleuten des 17./18. Jahrhunderts ('Shipwreck! Three self-narratives of merchants in the 17th/18th century')

摘要

Shipwreck has always been one of the most dramatic and dreadful events seafarers could encounter. In the early modern period, it was a frequent menace, and tales of drowning and survival on the seas have provided an abundance of eyewitness accounts. Shipwrecks also figure prominently as moments of existential crisis and narrative turning points in nearly three thousand years of literature, from Homer's Odyssey to William Shakespeare's Tempest, and from Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe to Yann Martel's Life of Pi. It is therefore not in the least surprising that Otto Ulbricht chose Schiffbruch! {Shipwreck!) as the lurid title for his edition of three early modern self-narratives, even though the event constitutes a major theme of only one of them.