Abstract
The article analyses the interpretation of the foolishness theme in the German Renaissance literature. It is shown that from the viewpoint of the humanistic thought that was established at the turn of the XV-XVI centuries, the medieval world appeared stupid and uneducated, rejecting new knowledge and remaining ignorant, adhering to the principles of scholasticism. The authors show that, if in the schwanks of J. Pauli, J. Wickram, J. Frey, M. Montanus and in S. Brant’s “Ship of Fools”, which are instructive in nature, stupidity is represented as a social vice, then in “Schildbürgers” and in “The Praise of Folly” by Erasmus of Rotterdam, it is distinctly carnival and expands to the metaphor of human existence.
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