Praise Of Folly Research Articles

“Leisure to Make Rhymes”: St. Thomas More as English Poet

Part One SCHOLAR, LAWYER, HUMANIST, WIT, Lord Chancellor for Henry VIII, martyr and canonized saint, Thomas More was also probably the most prolific writer of English literature in the early Tudor period, as the now completed Yale Edition of his writings attests. (1) His reputation as an author has of course been chiefly associated with his Latin masterpiece, Utopia (1516), (2) one of the seminal works of the Western literary tradition, which has provided both name and model for the numerous ideal commonwealths that have been imagined, and on occasion attempted in practice, from that day up to the present. His History of King Richard III, (3) written (c. 1514) in both English and Latin versions in order to reach More's two principal audiences of fellow countrymen and continental humanists, marks the beginning of modern historical writing in England; though unfinished and unpublished in More's lifetime, it found its way into the sixteenth-century chronicles and served as the principal source for Shakespeare's play. More's early classical studies resulted not only in his Latin epigrams, many translated from Greek originals, but in the translations undertaken with Erasmus of some works of Lucian, (4) the master of Greek dialogue who proved to be fruitful stimulus for the original work of both great humanists, in particular for the Utopia and for Erasmus's Encomium Moriae (The Praise of Folly), (5) the title of which is punning tribute to his friend. Much of the literary activity of More's mature years, which were largely absorbed by affairs of state, was concerned with the controversies of the early Reformation, beginning with his Latin Responsio (1523) to Martin Luther's attacks on Henry VIII's treatise on the sacraments. (6) The best of this work is certainly the first written in English, A Dialogue Concerning Heresies (1529; 1531), (7) in which More employs his favorite literary form to discredit the religious innovations entering England from the continent. Described by C. S. Lewis as perhaps the best specimen of Platonic dialogue ever produced in English, (8) this work was followed in rapid succession by series of polemical works in which the literary dimension is less in evidence: The Supplication of Souls (1529); The Confutation of Tyndale's Answer (1532; 1533), massive two-part sequel to the Dialogue; The Apology of Sir Thomas More, Knight (1532); The Debellation of Salem and Bizance (1532); The Answer to Poisoned Book (1533). (9) A more meditative focus, which had already shown itself in the materials translated and adapted as The Life of Pico (c. 1505) and in the unfinished meditation on the Last Things (c. 1522), (10) was given greater opportunity for expression in the Treatise on the Passion (1533-34), (11) written after More's retirement from public life, and particularly in the important works written after he was imprisoned in the Tower of London in April 1534. His greatest English work, A Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation, (12) is classic of prison literature, revealing in fictional form the profound significance of Christian faith in the face of suffering and persecution. More's final work, the Latin DeTristitia Christi (The Sadness of Christ), (13) which survives in holograph manuscript smuggled from his cell, is series of very personal meditations on Christ's agony before the Passion, and provides an intimate picture of More's own mind as he faced impending execution. Not to be omitted from consideration of More's literary works are his letters, (14) in Latin and English, which range from defenses of Christian humanism and the great correspondence with Erasmus, the primary figure of that movement and More's other self, through various letters concerned with political and diplomatic matters to the moving letters to his own family, particularly those written during his imprisonment, (15) which give primary witness to that integrity of conscience that brought More to the block and made him a man for all seasons. …

Natural fools and the historiography of Renaissance folly

The historiography of Western folly has projected the Renaissance as an age uniquely tolerant of and interested in irrationality, taking the humanist ‘praise of folly’ literature as a marker of this openness. This article problematizes such a representation of Renaissance humanism by exploring the discourse of ‘naturals’ rather than of artificial fools who are at the heart of humanist celebrations of folly. By focussing on legal, medical and New World debates on natural fools, ‘monsters’, wild men, ‘savages’ and natives, this article reveals not just an ambivalence towards fools but also deeper contradictions within Renaissance humanism. The article points out continuities between medieval scholastic, Renaissance humanist and Enlightenment discourses of folly, seeking to provide a caveat against both traditional and Foucaultian historiographies which regard the Renaissance as being singularly hospitable to mental deviance. This article also identifies the persistence of certain tendencies in the discursive practices of folly, finding echoes of Renaissance discussions in later debates in the field of mental disability and the history of psychiatry.

Cervantes' Carnivalesque Ship of Fools in the Viaje del Parnaso

Sebastian Brant's Das Narrenschiff (1494), or Ship of Fools, with its satirical galleries of fools in their vain quest for a utopian Narragonia, or Fools' Land, launches a vogue of paradoxical folly that found safe haven in numerous ports flanking the vast mare magnum of the literature on folly. Deeply rooted in the classical and medieval tradition of satire, the literary concept of paradoxical folly is lucidly articulated by Erasmus of Rotterdam in his Praise of Folly (1511). Ever the preferred tool of the satirist, and etymologically denoting that which is contrary or counter to (para) conventional opinion and expectation (doxa), paradoxical folly is intricately connected to the burgeoning motif of the ship of fools, which may be deemed a literary subgenre within the tradition of paradoxical folly and which serves as a venue for the expression of folly through irony, parody, and humour, all literary devices that aim to subvert and question established convention. Cervantes' Viaje del Parnaso, intricatel...

The Precarious Balance of Desiderius Erasmus and The Praise of Folly

이 글은 에라스무스의 『우신예찬』이 작가의 삶과 어떤 관계를 형성하는가를 읽어내고자 한다. 르네상스 유럽에서나 현대의 학자 및 학계에 있어서 인본주의자의 대표자로 여겨지고 있는 에라스무스를 이해하는 데 있어 이 작품은 어떤 역할을 하는가를 살펴보는 것이 이 글의 목적이다. 그의 개인적인 내면생활이 거의 밝혀지지 않은 가운데 작품 속에서 등장하는 몇 가지 개인적이고 전기적인 실마리들을 통해 에라스무스가 자신의 학자로서의 삶을 추구하면서 어떤 정신적인 고통을 겪었는지를 살펴볼 수 있다. 중세의 신분제도가 살아있던 시절에 서자로 태어나 경제적으로 많은 고통을 겪으며 자라난 에라스무스는 평생 동안 평온하고 고결한 학자로서의 삶을 추구한다. 하지만 그의 현실은 자신을 의도한 바와 다른 세계로 이끌며, 자신이 별로 좋아할 수 없는 수도원의 수사가 되는 상황에 놓인다. 이런 역경은 자신의 삶에 있어 이상을 설정하고 추구하는데 있어 많은 갈등과 어려움을 낳을 수밖에 없었다. 끊임없이 후견인을 찾아야 하는 입장에서 자신의 유일한 위안은 고전과 성서를 읽고 학자로서 순결한 삶을 추구하고자 노력하는 것이었다. 그렇기에 그는 현실의 고통올 해결해야만 하는 자신의 모습과 이상을 추구하는 자신의 모습 사이에 괴리감을 느끼며, 계속해서 그 괴리감을 극복하고 균형을 유지하고자 노력하였다고 말할 수 있다. 이런 측면에서 『우신예찬』에서 자신과 자신이 속한 현실을 패러디하는 과정은 자신을 객관화하고 현실과 이상 사이에서 균형을 찾으려는 작가 에라스무스의 현실적인 수행과정이었다고 말할 수 있다. 학자에 대한 풍자, 종교에 대한 풍자, 우정 및 기타 현실에 대한 여러 풍자는 자신이 현실의 딜레마에서 벗어나 초월적인 초연함을 추구하고자 한 행위의 일환으로 여겨질 수 있다. 특히 이 작품이 에라스무스가 40세에 이르렀을 즈음에 쓰였다는 사실은 작품이 작가의 현실 인식 및 수용의 과정으로 쓰였을 가능성을 열어준다. 이런 가능성을 바탕으로 이 글은 『우신예찬』이 작가의 개인적인 고통이 스며든 작품이며 평생 동안 작가가 추구한 이상과 현실 간의 균형을 잡으려는 노력의 결실이었음을 밝힌다.

Stultitia loquitur: Fiction and Folly in Early Modern Literature

In the first edition of Erasmus’s Praise of Folly, after the Greek title of the work, Encomion Morias, the European public of 1511 could find a brief designation of the character in charge of the speech: ‘Stultitia loquitur’ – ‘Folly speaks’. Halfway between the theatrical indication of the entrance of Folly as a dramatis persona and the rhetorical game of the orator opening a declamatio, and playfully showing his public the mask that the writer only pretends to assume, this phrase presents the reader with a particular problem: that of the special ability of ironic discourse to create fiction. This is a problem that, from the Renaissance to the early modern period, in France as in England, Italy or Spain, is linked to the development of a general theory of fiction, concerning representational as well as figurative forms of literature, whether narrative or dramatic. Folly does indeed share with fiction the capacity of creating alternative representations of the world – and thus of re-figuring the world depicted by reason or history. But their discourses also share another feature, whose importance is best seen in such experimental forms of narration in the Renaissance as the Utopias of Giacopo Sannazaro and of Thomas More, the first novels of Rabelais in France or the Vida de Lazarillo de Tormes in Spain. This feature would be their paradoxical structure, and hence the instability of their speech acts, which deny, suspend, or do not seriously guarantee the truth of their statements. The merging of folly and fiction in the creation of the literary fool by Cervantes, and the lasting influence of the Quijote’s imaginative or imaginary madness, for instance in the French seventeenth-century tradition of the ‘anti-roman’, lead these two different means of reformulating the world effectively to coincide; inventing and animating the character of the Fool nearly always brings out the heuristic and epistemological potentialities of this coincidence. Nevertheless, this extensive use of fictional or fictive folly, from the fury of Ariosto’s

The New Praise of Folly

When we look into a mirror we think the image that confronts us is accurate. But move a millimetre and the image changes. We are actually looking at a never-ending range of reflections. But sometimes a writer has to smash the mirror – for it is on the other side of that mirror that the truth stares at us. I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory. If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us – the dignity of man. Harold Pinter, Nobel Prize Lecture2

Actividad teatral en la región de Madrid según los protocolos de Juan García de Albertos, 1634-1660: Estudio y documentos by Charles Davis, J. E. Varey

MLR, I03.2, 2oo8 569 his self-presentation, yet in his encounter with Don Quixote he shows a surprising capacity foropenness and wonder. His admiratio again demonstrates thatparadox can challenge and expand the categories that informour judgements and actions. Like the other explorations of paradox inDon Quixote, Don Diego's reaction toDon Quixote offers amodel for the reader's response toCervantes's complex and dialogic text. Adventures inParadox follows a significant trend incurrent criticism ofCervantes by interpreting interactions among the characters ofDon Quixote as allegories of the reading process. Presberg refers frequently to the reader's responses to the text, and he makes eclectic use of reception theory.This theoreticalmaterial, however, isnot always convincingly integrated into the larger analysis. Presberg defines paradox at times as a general construct, and at times as a pattern of thought or discourse that can be traced through thehistory ofEuropean literature.His theoretical understanding of paradox isnotably broad, and extends toaspects ofDon Quixote thatcritics have often explicated inother terms, such as the ambiguities of the relationship between history and fictionand the uses of interlaced narratives. A more limited and specific view of paradox might be developed, with reference to the traditional paradoxes thatappear inCervantes's text,and an explicit consideration ofCervantes in relation towriters outside Spain would be helpful. Although Presberg is understandably reluctant to pursue the vexed question ofErasmian influence on Cervantes, his analysis indicates marked parallels between The Praise of Folly and Don Quixote which clearly place Cervantes's work in theEuropean tradition. These are, however, small reservations about a study that makes an important contribution toour understanding of the forms of thought and rhetoric that informDon Quixote. Presberg offers valuable insights when he aligns Cervantes's novel with thegenre of themock encomium and when he describes Don Quixote as a paradoxical figure who induces a response ofwonder and openness inother characters. Adventures inParadox is an essential study for readers interested in the puzzles of logic and storytelling thatCervantes presents to us. UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO STEPHEN RuPP Actividad teatral en la regi6nde Madrid segin losprotocolos deJuan Garcia deAlbertos, I634-I660: estudio y documentos. By CHARLES DAVIS and J.E. VAREY. 2 vols. (Fuentes para la historia del teatro en Espana, 35-36) London: Tamesis. 2003. Vol. 1: 596 pp.; vol. II: 575 pp. kioo (the set). ISBN 978-I-85566-o62-5 (vol. I); 978-I-85566-079-3 (vol. II). In theArchivo Hist6rico de Protocolos deMadrid are housed the registers of legal documents overseen inSpain's capital by the scores ofnotaries who worked in the city. Charles Davis and JohnVarey were not the firstto see thepotential of thisarchive for shedding lighton thehistory of the theatre in earlymodern Spain, whose day-to-day operation depended on the creation of a variety of legal contracts, and the editors acknowledge asmuch in dedicating theirvolumes toCristobal Perez Pastor (i833 I908). Perez Pastor's toils amongst theseprotocolos fed into thepublication a century ago of, interalia, important volumes on Lope de Vega and Calder6n, but, although many of the documents reproduced and studied here had already been published under his name, hismain interest was not in the functioning of theworld of the theatre. By investigating in detail the registers of one of the notaries Perez Pastor had worked on, JuanGarcia de Albertos, Davis and Varey are able tocorrect thedeficien cies of the early twentieth-century publications-some edited from Perez Pastor's notes-and, above all, expand theamount ofmaterial available to scholars. The fuller picture produced sheds a different lighton theatrical activity in and around Madrid in theperiod. Although other notaries' registerswill produce (indeed are already pro ducing) furtherfascinating documents todo with the theatre, the choice ofGarcia de 570 Reviews Albertos is made because in i639 he purchased amonopoly on thewriting of contracts todo with the theatre.Thus his theatrical contracts are particularly numerous in the I640s and i65os, forming a high proportion of the content of his protocolos, and they are fascinatingly rich. Davis and Varey have edited all the 2358 documents, forobvious reasons, by cut ting the legal formulae and limiting their transcriptions to themost relevantmaterial they contain. Nevertheless, in one appendix they provide full transcriptions of ten sample documents of themost common types.These record...

Locos y dementes en la literatura cervantina: a propósito de las fuentes médicas de Cervantes en materia neuropsiquiátrica

Throughout the writings of Cervantes, the lunatic or the madman (which allows for certain neurological pathologies, such as epilepsy) is a figure that appears over and over again, as a literary strategy that the author uses to express his own particular social criticism. This literary characterisation of insanity is endowed with a number of clinical connotations that suggest that Cervantes was quite familiar with certain elements of medicine; although such knowledge may well have come from relatives and friends, he also showed a personal interest in the mentally ill (there is evidence that he visited the Hospital de Inocentes--a mental asylum--in Seville). Likewise, it seems obvious that Cervantes was also familiar with several medical treatises concerning the neurosciences, which were very much in vogue in Spain in the late Renaissance period. In fact, his personal library included two works that, in addition to serving to inspire the Alcalá-born author on some points, are cited almost literally in some of his novels. These references are The Examination of Men's Wits, written by Juan Huarte de San Juan in 1575, and the annotated Spanish version of Dioscorides (On medical matters and mortal poisons) by Andrés Laguna, from 1555. Similarly, the clinical description of the main character in the novela ejemplar Vidriera, the Lawyer seems to have been taken from the medical tract Dignotio et cura affectuum melancholicorum (1569) by Alfonso de Santa Cruz. Lastly, it has also been suggested that, in the construction of his literature, Cervantes drew on the humanistic approaches advocated by Erasmus of Rotterdam in his In Praise of Folly (1509). These four works may have served as a source of medical information that allowed Cervantes to develop some of his characters and to write his accurate comments on therapeutic matters.

Twentieth Annual Roland H. Bainton Presidential Lecture: Intertextual Play: Erasmus' Use of Adages in the Colloquies

AbstractA copious use of ancient adages is a prominent feature of the Praise of Folly. Focusing on the Colloquies, this essay discusses passages where a source or subtext has previously not been recognized. In the Ciceronianus, his plea for eclectic imitation, Erasmus declares that the basic principle of art is concealing the technique. This rule is taken as a point of departure for analyzing the ways in which he handles adages. Rather than concealing a borrowing, Erasmus adapts it, using paraphrase, parody, inversion of the sense, and by combining it with other materials. Angelo Poliziano's writing was an important model for him.

The Characters of Madness in the Talking Cure

Madness, as a character, is presented as such by Erasmus of Rotterdam in his The Praise of Folly: “It is I, Folly, who speaks.” When it appears in the middle of psychoanalysis, the usual instruments of exploration must be modified. This implies bringing into play an initial representation of events that have never been inscribed either in the life history or in the Unconscious, which may be repressed or forgotten later on. The purpose of this process is to put time in motion again. In this framework, the analogy between the action of theatre and the action of analysis leads me to describe the effects on the analyst when this somewhat unseemly character enters the scene, compelling the therapist to recognize the share he takes in its evocation.

Erasmus's Controversies (review)

Reviewed by: Erasmus’s Controversies Anthony F. D’Elia (bio) Erasmus. Erasmus’s Controversies. Volume 84 of Collected Works of Erasmus. Edited by Nelson H. Minnich and Daniel J. Sheerin. Translated by Daniel J. Sheerin University of Toronto Press. 792. $175.00 Volume 84 of the prestigious Collected Works of Erasmus series provides a clear, readable translation with abundant notes and apparatus of Erasmus's controversies with Alberto Pio (1475–1531), a conservative and influential Catholic layman. Daniel Sheerin enriches each page of his translations of the four works with on average a half-page of notes, in which he compares texts, situates passages in the larger historical context, and offers updated bibliography for further readings. Nelson Minnich provides an exhaustive introduction (126 pages) on Alberto Pio and Erasmus. This will be an essential starting point for anyone working on Pio, High Renaissance Rome, Catholic reform, Erasmus, and the early Reformation. Unlike other critics of Erasmus, Alberto Pio was a layman, who was a relative and confidant of popes and emperors. After reading In Praise of Folly, Pio accused Erasmus of impiety, of supporting Luther, and preparing the ground for the Reformation. While most critics had limited their attacks to a single topic and received single responses from Erasmus, Erasmus and Pio debated over twenty major questions discussed in at least fifteen of Erasmus's works. Erasmus's replies often descend into invectives against Pio's character and, according to Erasmus, his questionable sanity; Erasmus even mocks Pio's funeral – not even death spared him! Alberto Pio had an excellent education. The legendary printer Aldus Manutius trained him in Greek and Latin, and his uncle, the even more famous Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, gave him a grounding in scholastic philosophy. As prince of Carpi, Pio tried to establish a learned court by buying Giorgio Valla's library and hiring the humanist Marcus Musurus to be librarian and Greek tutor. So, Erasmus's opponent was no narrow-minded cleric, but a sophisticated man with humanist learning and pretensions. Pio worked as ambassador in Rome from 1512 to 1527, and it was during this time that he encountered Erasmus's writings. In particular, he was disgusted by the anticlericalism in the In Praise of Folly. While he respected Erasmus as a humanist, Pio thought he was a bad philosopher and theologian. The similarities with Luther were too close, and Pio agreed with Zúniga's accusation that 'either Erasmus lutherizes or Luther Erasmusizes.' Erasmus's responses to Pio's attacks are lengthy and not always clear. He tends to follow the structure of his accuser, and his responses follow in the order given. Because he is writing an apology, Erasmus's text is necessarily defensive rather than a coherent articulation of a philosophical [End Page 403] position. In book 3 of his Apology, for example, Erasmus defends the supposed blasphemy in his In Praise of Folly. When Folly says that the cult of the Virgin Mary and the saints is insane, Erasmus says that she is criticizing the many superstitions surrounding the saints and pilgrimages, the magical prayers, and the belief that Mother Mary was greater than her Son. Folly similarly attacks the improper use of indulgences, not indulgences themselves. Folly, he says, does not condemn clerical wealth but only criticizes popes, cardinals, and priests who try to imitate secular monarchs rather than Christ. Erasmus did not always deign to reply to his critics. This volume of his responses is especially important for understanding the reception of his works, his polemical purpose behind a work of satire like the In Praise of Folly, his strong support of church reform, and his own assertion of his orthodoxy in the face of Catholic and Protestant critics. Anthony F. D’Elia Anthony D’Elia, Department of History, Queen’s Univerity Copyright © 2007 University of Toronto Press Incorporated

Le plaisir des sens comme source de bonheur dans les <i>Stultiferae naves</i> de Josse Bade et l<i>'Éloge de la Folie</i> d'Érasme

The pursuit of happiness represents one of the major paradoxes of Erasmus' best-known work, Encomium Moriae (The Praise of Folly) (1511). While spiritual bliss is upheld as the ultimate form of happiness, the speaking subject celebrating it, who is no other than Folly herself, also argues for the superiority of the pleasures derived from the five senses. The narrative strategy which helps to maintain such an ambiguous position with regards to the ideal form of happiness, however, was scarcely Erasmus' invention, although he has been traditionally credited for it. As shown by the present comparative analysis, the praise of sensory pleasure through the mouth of Folly can be found in a nearly contemporary source, the Stultiferae naves (The Ship of Foolish Maidens) (1501). This work was probably well-known to Erasmus, since it belonged to the famous early-humanist printer, editor, commentator, and author Jodocus Badius Ascensius, who was also his principal Parisian editor until a regrettable event put an end to their relationship.

George Herbert’s Divine Comedy: Humor in The Temple

George Herbert’s Divine Comedy: Humor in The Temple Michael C. Schoenfeldt (bio) One of the signal if unexpected pleasures of George Herbert’s poetry is its frequent recourse to affable laughter at human foibles. We tend to assume that the ascetic orientation of religion is by definition opposed to terrestrial pleasure. And Herbert in particular seems to exemplify the sober earnestness that marks a particular stereotype of Anglican worship.1 In The Temple, though, Herbert intends to reorient a range of secular pleasures toward heaven, declaring that God is at once their source and goal. Terrestrial pleasure is not negated, but it is revealed to be only a scanty appetizer for the deeply sensual joys of heaven. These joys, I want to argue, extend not only to the more carnal pleasures of food and sex – pleasures whose uneasy presence in Herbert I have tried to document elsewhere – but also to the deeply social amusements of humor.2 Herbert feels that laughter, like all pleasures, is morally and socially hazardous, and so must be carefully circumscribed, and deployed with the greatest delicacy and decorum. Attention to the myriad uses of humor throughout Herbert’s corpus discloses the anxious if indulgent opulence of a religious imagination which presumes that the “quick returns of courtesie and wit” might provide a worthy medium for the devout worship of God.3 Despite the unrelenting solemnity with which Western culture tends to drape religious devotion, Herbert was far from the first to explore potential links between religion and humor. St. Paul incisively delineated the divergent standards of wisdom that demarcate the differences between terrestrial and celestial perspectives: For the preaching of the Crosse is to them that perish, foolishnesse: but unto us which are saved, it is the power of God. For it is written, I will destroy the wisedome of the wise, and wil bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. (I Corinthians 1:18–19; AV) [End Page 45] Building on a passage from Isaiah (29:14; “for the wisedome of their wise men shall perish, and the understanding of their prudent men shall be hid”), Paul tells the community at Corinth that Christianity entails a complete inversion of terrestrial hierarchies of power and knowledge: Hath not God made foolish the wisedome of this world? … [When] the world by wisedome knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishnesse of preaching, to save them that beleeve … The foolishnesse of God is wiser then men: and the weaknesse of God is stronger then men … God hath chosen the foolish things of the world, to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weake things of the world, to confound the things which are mighty … that no flesh should glory in his presence. (I Corinthians 1:20–30) Paul here argues that those pursuits that the world mocks are in fact the occasion of a higher wisdom. “The wisdome of this world,” he argues, “is foolishness with God” (1 Corinthians 3:19). He deliberately aligns the Christian subversion of earthly values with the comic inversion of terrestrial hierarchies in his invocation of a decidedly theatrical metaphor: “For wee are made a spectacle unto the world, and to Angels, and to men. We are fooles for Christs sake, but ye are wise in Christ” (I Corinthians 4:9–10). This Pauline concept of holy folly is developed at length by Erasmus in the latter sections of his enormously popular work, the Encomium Moriae, or Praise of Folly. Jesus, notes Erasmus’s figure of Folly, was made something of a fool himself in order to help the folly of mankind, when he assumed the nature of man and was seen in man’s form. Nor did he wish [sinners] to be redeemed in any other way save by the folly of the cross and through his simple, ignorant apostles, to whom he unfailingly preached folly. He taught them to shun wisdom, and made his appeal through the example of children, lilies, mustard-seed and humble sparrows, all foolish, senseless things.4 Erasmus wryly suggests that Jesus’ deliberate metaphoric simplicity and parabolic method entailed an active participation in the comic mode. [End Page 46] He argues, moreover...

Hans Holbein the Younger: painter at the court of Henry VIII

Introductory essay by Stephanie Buck on Holbein's activities as a portraitist. She focuses on the role Erasmus played in Holbein's early career, and the later English period during which he portrayed both the royals and their circle as well as civilians. Buck also writes about his development as a portrait painter, his forerunners (Durer, Metsys), and about his book illustrations for Erasmus's Praise of Folly. Essay by Jochen Sander focusing on the so-called Darmstadt Madonna, which sheds new light on the creation of this painting. 40 paintings including full-page colour details Who's Who in the Life and Times of Hans Holbein explains forty essential figures and fifteen essential ideas/movements in texts varying from 80 to 250 words.

In Praise of Folly

In Praise of Folly

From Epic and Tragic to Comic and Satiric: Reversed Perspectives in Painting and Writing from the Renaissance to the Seventeenth Century

IN THE ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY years or so before Racine, European painting and literature had seen a decisive shift towards a preference for the comic perspective. Although the tragic and the epic view behind the masterpieces of painters such as Poussin and Claude Lorrain, and of the tragic poets, Corneille and Racine, enjoyed immense prestige, especially in seventeenth-century France, I hope to show that, from the early 1500s through to the late 1600s, Democritus, the laughing philosopher, came increasingly to be seen as wiser than his companion figure, Heraclitus, the weeping philosopher. My focus in this paper will be on the Democritean perspectives in the Renaissance, on its presence in painting from Pieter Bruegel to Georges de la Tour, and on some of its manifestations in the work of Moliere, La Fontaine and La Bruyere. Aristotle on mimesis had said that poets, like portrait-painters, presented human beings in three ways: as worse than they are in real life, as better, or as the same. The first represents the comic perspective which views people through a diminishing lens, tending to focus on the lower orders, emphasising people's flaws and caricaturing their uglier features; such a perspective can often be funny, but is not necessarily so. The second evokes the nobler, tragic or epic perspective which magnifies the human condition, focusing on kings, courts and the gods of Greek myth. Aristotle took little interest in the middle perspective (Poetics, II, 1-7). Renaissance and seventeenth-century literary critics embraced the Aristotelian view that the tragic and epic gemes were intrinsically superior to the comic.2 The practice of many painters and writers, however, was different. Erasmus, for example, preferred the comic perspective, actively mocking the tragic perspective as an agent of distortion and falsehood. He played the Democritus (especially in Praise of Folly), laughing loudly at the farcical progress of this world's affairs. 3 Democritus and Heraclitus, especially the former, recur frequently in the painting and literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Rabelais and Montaigne both took the side of Democritus. Among the many artists who painted him were Rubens, Velazquez and Rembrandt, the latter, most interestingly, as a self-portrait. Montaigne explains their symbolic value in his chapter

Robert Burton/Democritus Junior and Thomas More

This article studies the different ways in which Thomas More and his writings appear in Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy. Democritus Junior, Burton’s reinvented persona, links Burton with More, whom Erasmus associates with Democritus in the preface to his Praise of Folly. Burton also draws directly upon two of More’s humanist works, his epigrams and the Utopia. The article traces the connections between these works in detail and discusses Burton’s “poeticall commonwealth” in relation to the Utopia: there are overlaps in theme, structure, and movement of thought. Though very different from More, Burton was an active and engaged reader, and the Utopia is an indispensable part of the Anatomy.

Krazy as a Fool: Erasmus of Rotterdam's Praise of Folly and Herriman of Coconino's Krazy Kat1

Krazy as a Fool: Erasmus of Rotterdam's <i>Praise of Folly</i> and Herriman of Coconino's <i>Krazy Kat</i>1

Intentionis laus: �ber Nutzen und Grenzen von Intentionalit�t anhand von Erasmus' Lob der Torheit

The current debate on intentionality may be characterized as an impasse of absolutist concepts concerning the relation of text to intention: intentio auctoris (Hirsch), intentio operis (Eco) and poststructuralist turning away from intention (Derrida). This article criticizes all these concepts as ontological, and argues for an approach based on differentiation. The different views on intentionality are regarded here as more or less useful tools for interpretation, depending on the kinds of texts, genres or authors that are dealt with. The heuristic value of this approach to intentionality is demonstrated using Erasmus' Praise of Folly as a case study. If the heterogeneous interpretations of the intention of this text and/or its author are considered on the same epistemological level, the enormous potential for signification in Praise of Folly can be said to have been generated by confrontation with the different concepts of intentionality. This thesis may itself serve as a point of departure for yet another interpretation: Praise of Folly as a text written in order to generate heterogeneous intentional readings, as an answer to the specific historical situation of its production.

Erasmus of Europe: The Making of a Humanist, 1467-1500.

This is a biography of Renaissance humanist, Erasmus of Rotterdam. It is an account of the philosopher's journeys from his monastery to service with a great Burgundian bishop and from there to Paris, England, the Low Countries and Switzerland, looking at the history of ideas in which Erasmus played a role. The book also studies all Erasmus' early writings including his letters, his contributions to Renaissance dialogue and essay and particularly Adagia, the Colloquies and In Praise of Folly.