Desiderius Erasmus The Praise Of Folly
Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam wrote “The Praise of Folly” in 1511. The essay is a satire of many of the superstitions and older traditions that Europeans believed in during that time period. Erasmus wrote the essay to attack a variety of human weaknesses, which included greed, pride, and self-importance. The essay went through more than twenty-four editions, just during Erasmus’ lifetime alone. As a result, Erasmus has influenced many humanists from his time until the present day. The Praise of Folly can be considered a modern text because it was published at a time where individualism was becoming more prominent in society. Literature during the sixteenth-century could be considered a protest or reform in a way because it reflected the tension
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This is translated from the opening sentence, “Now what else is the whole life of mortals but a sort of comedy, in which the various actors, disguised by various costumes and masks, walk on and play each one his part, until the manager waves them off the stage?” Essentially each actor plays their role, until the manager waves them off, or in other words, a human lives his or her life until the ultimate power, God in this case, decides that their time has come. She continues to explain that actors play various roles where one can be both a king and a servant. Then, she goes into further detail about the “roles,” such as medicine, law, philosophers, gamblers, hunters, superstitious folk, authors of books, poets, businessmen, grammarians, men who obsess about their bloodline and ancestry, artists, and performers. According to Folly, all of these roles display smugness, silliness, and irrelevance. The further into the essay a reader can take note that Folly’s tone of voice becomes more harsh and condescending of those she speaks about. She specifically targets the theologians because they tend to take pride in their arguments, and believe in nature rather than religious explanations of phenomena. This idea can be seen in the following quote, “…while the theologian, after poring over chestfuls of the great corpus of divinity, gnaws on bitter
This is translated from the opening sentence, “Now what else is the whole life of mortals but a sort of comedy, in which the various actors, disguised by various costumes and masks, walk on and play each one his part, until the manager waves them off the stage?” Essentially each actor plays their role, until the manager waves them off, or in other words, a human lives his or her life until the ultimate power, God in this case, decides that their time has come. She continues to explain that actors play various roles where one can be both a king and a servant. Then, she goes into further detail about the “roles,” such as medicine, law, philosophers, gamblers, hunters, superstitious folk, authors of books, poets, businessmen, grammarians, men who obsess about their bloodline and ancestry, artists, and performers. According to Folly, all of these roles display smugness, silliness, and irrelevance. The further into the essay a reader can take note that Folly’s tone of voice becomes more harsh and condescending of those she speaks about. She specifically targets the theologians because they tend to take pride in their arguments, and believe in nature rather than religious explanations of phenomena. This idea can be seen in the following quote, “…while the theologian, after poring over chestfuls of the great corpus of divinity, gnaws on bitter