The Parson In Jubilee - Jean Paul (Empyrean Series)

170 pages // 8.5"x5.5" inches paperback // ISBN: 9781969287039

Declaring himself the inventor of a new literary genre—one which “explains little and banters much”—Jean Paul in The Parson in Jubilee: An Appendix (1797) portrays the joys and sorrows of the Schwers family on the eve of a momentous occasion: the double fifty-year anniversaries of the parson’s marriage and of his service to his village congregation. When a messenger arrives with a letter appointing the pastor’s son, Ingenuin, to the pastorship from which the father will soon retire, the romance between Alithea, the family’s adoptive daughter, and Ingenuin is starting to blossom. Through a series of “pastoral and encyclical letters”, Jean Paul presents the reader with an uproarious satirical complement to the book’s idyllic aspects. The book concludes with “The Appendix of the Appendix, or, My Christmas Eve,” one of Jean Paul’s most stunning and wondrous dream visions. Never before available in English, studiously annotated by translator Matthew Spencer, here is an irreverent, unclassifiable work from one of Germany’s most beloved and eccentric novelists.

Jean Paul was the nom-de-plume of Johann Paul Friedrich Richter (March 21, 1763–Nov. 14, 1825), a German writer of long novels noted for their digression, warmth, and humor. After several early satirical works (at the “vinegar-factory”, he would say), he hit a stride in the 1790s with The Invisible Lodge (1793), Hesperus (1795), Siebenkäs (1797), and Titan (1803). 

Matthew Spencer is a writer, translator, and publisher. He runs the small-press Paradise Editions as well as the literary newsletter Paradise Almanac. Along with Jean Paul, he has translated Wolfgang Hilbig and Heinrich von Kleist from German. He lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.