Mother Courage (German Mutter Courage) is a character from a Grimmelshausen 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 Teutsch (1668).
The Bertolt Brecht play Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder (Mother Courage and Her Children) 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's Irish language novel An Cléireach. After travelling from Flanders in the company of a junior officer in the Tyrone regiment she serves in 1650 as a camp follower in the regiment of colonel Edmund O'Flaherty in the Royalist army.
Famous quotes containing the words mother and/or courage:
“[My mother told me:] “You must decide whether you want to get married someday, or have a career.”... I set my sights on the career. I thought, what does any man really have to offer me?”
—Annie Elizabeth Delany (b. 1891)
“For Virtue in her daily Race,
Like Janus bears a double Face;
Looks back with Joy where she has gone,
And therefore goes with Courage on.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)