The Adventures of Baron Munchausen

Baron Munchausen recounts his exploits with complete assurance, however impossible they may sound. A hunting expedition, a military encounter or an ordinary difficulty quickly becomes the occasion for a feat that defeats common sense. Each new story asks the listener to accept the extraordinary as calmly as its narrator does. The humour of these adventures lies in that contrast between the baron’s matter-of-fact voice and the extravagant events he describes. Familiar boasts grow into fantastic inventions, while the conventions of heroic memoirs and travellers’ accounts are gently turned upside down. Associated with Rudolf Erich Raspe, these tales have made Munchausen a lasting figure of comic storytelling: a man whose imagination always provides another explanation when reality appears to object.