Dedication
To the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century inventors and
practitioners of the episodic picaresque novel,
especially
Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen (1621-1676)
author of
The Adventurous Simplicius Simplicissimus:
The account of the life of an odd vagrant named Melchior Sternfels von Fuchshaim:
namely where and in what manner he came into this world, what he saw, learned,
experienced, and endured therein; also why he again left it of his own free will.