Die Funktion von Straßennamen in Ch. Reuters Roman Schelmuffsky (1696). Mit einem Ausblick auf literarische Straßennamen von der Romantik bis zur Gegenwart

Abstract

In 1696 the Leipzig student Christian Reuter published the fantastical adventure novel Schelmuffskys warhafftige curiöse und sehr gefährliche Reisebeschreibung zu Wasser und Lande. In this picaresque novel, the first person narrator tells a succession of completely incredible incidents between Hamburg, Copenhague, Amsterdam, London, and Agra in an extremely boisterous manner. Schelmuffsky was nearly completely forgotten for about one hundred years, but was rediscovered by the Romanticists and has enjoyed popularity among literary critics ever since. Though most of these critics acknowledge that Reuter tries to convince his readers of the veracity of Schelmuffsky's adventures through different means, it has not yet been observed that, at least in his first adventure, set in Hamburg, street names play a decisive role in creating the illusion of credibility. This function of literary street names has been used by authors of fantastical tales like E.T.A. Hoffmann or Jorge L. Borges until modern times. However, Hoffmann also employs another function of real street names: he uses them to classify his characters socio-economically, thereby setting an example for literary realists like Theodor Fontane and others. Unlike Hoffmann and Fontane, who use real street names, Wilhelm Raabe invents hodonyms, exploiting their semantic or phonosymbolical values. A short outlook on modern literature shows that the functions of literary street names are extremely varied.