Heutelia

Heutelia is a German book about a journey through Switzerland, published anonymously in Paris in 1658,[1] and attributed to Hans Franz Veiras. It is notable as a work of baroque literature and as a critical account of social conditions in seventeenth-century Switzerland.

The title page of Heutelia

The book consists of 297 octavo pages. The book has been incorrectly ascribed to Jakob von Graviseth.[2]

The title, Heutelia, is an anagram of Helvetia, the Latin name of Switzerland (U and V were considered the same letter). The invented name also evokes the Greek adjective εὔθηλος (euthēlos) meaning "with a full udder," thus playing on stereotypes of the Swiss as a nation of cowherds.[3]

References
  1. The titlepage of the edition shows a satyr holding an engraved slab saying Lvtetiae Anno MDCLVIII and the motto Veritas odium parit, cf. the digitised copy of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Munich.
  2. Friederich, Werner Paul (1937), "Jakob von Graviseth's Heutelia", PMLA, vol. 52, pp. 1062–1071.
  3. Gemert, Guillaume van (1998), "Kuhschweizer und Butterfresser. Schweizer Befindlichkeit und Leitbilder schweizerischer Zukunftsorientierung in Hans Franz Veiras' Heutelia (1658)", in Enklaar, Jattie; Ester, Hans (eds.), Vivat Helvetia: Die Herausforderung einer nationalen Identität, Amsterdam: Rodopi, pp. 127–128, ISBN 978-90-420-0674-4
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