Product Description

Erasmus of Rotterdam (c. 1466–1536) is one of the greatest figures of the Renaissance humanist movement, which abandoned medieval pieties in favour of a rich new vision of the individual’s potential. Praise of Folly, written to amuse his friend Sir Thomas More, is Erasmus’s best-known work. Its dazzling mixture of fantasy and satire is narrated by a personification of Folly, dressed as a jester, who celebrates youth, pleasure, drunkenness and sexual desire, and goes on to lambast human pretensions, foibles and frailties, to mock theologians and monks and to praise the ‘folly’ of simple Christian piety. Erasmus’s wit, wordplay and wisdom made the book an instant success, but it also attracted what may have been sales-boosting criticism. The Letter to Maarten van Dorp, which is a defence of his ideas and methods, is also included.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #114075 in Books
• Published on: 2005-09-09
• Original language: Latin
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Review
"An eminently reliable and fully annotated edition based on the Latin text." Library Journal "Exciting and brilliant, this is likely to be the definitive translation of The Praise of Folly into English." Richard J. Schoeck

Richard J. Schoeck
"Exciting and brilliant, this is likely to be the definitive translation of The Praise of Folly into English."

From the Publisher
New translation of one of the greatest literary successes of the Humanistic Age.

Presented here in a new translation which brings out the underlying humour of the original.

Contains additional material which makes this edition unique: one of his lesser-known satirical dialogues, Pope Julius Barred from Heaven, and a selection from his other great work, The Adagia.