Mother Courage (German ''Mutter Courage'') is a character from a

Grimmelshausen Grimmelshausen is a municipality in the district of Hildburghausen, in Thuringia, Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe afte ...

novel ''Lebensbeschreibung der Ertzbetrügerin und Landstörtzerin Courasche'' (''The Runagate Courage'') dating from around 1670. The character had played a cameo role in '' Der abentheuerliche Simplicissimus'' in 1669. The

Bertolt Brecht Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known professionally as Bertolt Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a pl ...

play ''Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder'' (''

Mother Courage and Her Children ''Mother Courage and Her Children'' (german: Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder, links=no) is a play written in 1939 by the German dramatist and poet Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956), with significant contributions from Margarete Steffin. Four theatrical ...

'') gave her currency in the 20th century. Mother Courage is cast as a walking contradiction by Brecht. She is torn between protecting her children from the war and making a profit out of the war. Cúruisce (Courasche) appears in Ireland as a fictional character in

Darach Ó Scolaí Darach Ó Scolaí is an Irish novelist, playwright, publisher, and artist living in the County Galway Gaeltacht of Connemara. He was awarded the Oireachtas Prize for Literature in 2007 for his novel,'' An Cléireach''. Writing His 2007 novel' ...

's Irish language novel ''

An Cléireach ''An Cléireach'' (Gaelic: The Clerk) is a novel by the Irish writer Darach Ó Scolaí, published in 2007 and winner of the 2007 ''Oireachtas Prize for Literature''. It also won Gradam Uí Shúilleabháin in 2008. Set during the English Civil War ...

''. After travelling from Flanders in the company of a junior officer in the Tyrone regiment she serves in 1650 as a camp follower of the regiment of colonel Edmund O'Flaherty in the Royalist army.

References

Sources

*Cara M. Horwich (1997), ''Survival in Simplicissimus and Mutter Courage'' *John W. Jacobson, ''A Defense of Grimmelshausen's Courasche'', The German Quarterly, Vol. 41, No. 1 (Jan., 1968), pp. 42–54 Characters in German novels Characters in plays Fictional characters introduced in the 1660s Female characters in literature Female characters in theatre Fictional German people {{novel-char-stub