jungbrunnen » licence

World

France around 1700: a completely destitute young man steals a monk’s habit from a chapel. First he masquerades as an Irish pilgrim, then as a Japanese prince and – when he has to fear that his tall tales leak out – as an original inhabitant of Formosa who has been kidnapped and brought to France by Jesuits. He describes landscape, vegetation, culture and language of a country he has never seen. In the Netherlands he meets a Scottish priest who sees through his game. But the priest knows how to gain profit of the exotic stranger. He baptises him and brings him to London, where he becomes famous because of this extraordinary behaviour –he eats raw meet, for example. In the end bad conscience plagues George Psalmanazar and he unmasks himself as an impostor.