by Desiderius Erasmus
Well, what better book to read when you are in the Netherlands than Erasmus' tributed to stupidity. Okay, I'm sure he is not being serious, though it is difficult to tell at times, particularly when he suggests that by being an idiot one does become healthy, wealthy (but not necessarily wise – actua...
Praise of Folly was written by Erasmus when he was ill for a few days. It got a bit tweaked and published, even though Erasmus himself thought it wasn't very good.Yet Praise of Folly sparked a literary revolution with its commentary on medieval values and more modern view of society. The whole novel...
Hard for me not to crush on Erasmus: cosmopolitan, pacifist, menippean. Learned in ancient writings, interested in allegiance to neither reformation nor counter-reformation, but rather in democratization of Scripture through vernacular translation simultaneous to the construction of critical editio...
Written in a week or so for his friend Thomas More, Praise of Folly satirically catalogues the advantages of folly in the world. It delightfully mocks things society values most- from marriage to the pursuit of wisdom- so, in an iconoclastic way, I like the book. There is a reformist element to th...
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