Question

Prepare a short profile of Charles De Coster using the hints given below.
Name: Charles De Coster
Birth: 1827
Place of Birth: Munich
Famous as: Father of Belgian literature
Notable works: The Legend of Tyl Ulenspiegel and Lamme Goedzak
Death: 1879​

Answer 1

He was a keen student of François Rabelais and Michel de Montaigne, and familiarized himself with 16th-century French. He said that Flemish manners and speech could not be rendered faithfully in modern French, and accordingly wrote his best works in the old tongue. The success of his Légendes flamandes (1857) was increased by the illustrations of Félicien Rops and other friends. In 1861 he published his Contes brabançons, in modern French.And was born in Munich; his father, Augustin De Coster, was a native of Liège, who was attached to the household of the Apostolic Nuncio to Bavaria in Munich, but soon returned to Belgium.

Answer 2

   Charles de Coster, in full Charles- Theodore- Henri de Coster, born $20$ Aug, $1827$, Munich, Bavaria(Germany) and died $7$ May, $1879$, Brussels, Belgium). He was a Belgian novelist, writing in French, who stimulated Belgian public knowledge and prepared the ground for an original native literature.

   De Coster lived utmost of his life in poverty and obscurity and took $10$times to write his masterpiece, La Legend. Freely conforming the traditional tales of the folk icons Till Eulenspiegel (Ulenspiegel) and Lamme, he set his story in the $16^{th}$ century, at the height of the Inquisition. The idol’s father is burned at the stake as a heretic, and Ulenspiegel swears an pledge to retaliate his death.

   De Coster imbues his characters with heroic rates within a generally Belgian literalism. First developed in Legendes Flamandes( $1858$, Flemish Legends), his erudite style is largely colored and archaistic in the manner of Rabelais, Montaigne, and $16^{th}$- century historians. With its theme of resistance against oppression, the book has been called “ the Bible of Flanders ” and “ the breviary of freedom ”.

   Yet, neither the horrible death and torture scenes nor a certain tendency to rationalize help its being, as the author describes it, “ A merry, jocund book, a work of art and of literature.” The critics lead to a discrepancy between La Legend and other Belgian novels and It nearly took $20$ times for the novel to be appreciated.

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