In the Library
The Praise of Folly
Erasmus, 1511
- Form
- Form Essay
- Difficulty
- Difficulty Moderate
- Reading time
- Reading time 2.5 hours
- Translated by
- Translated by John Wilson
- Chapters
- Chapters 1
- Length
- Length 37k words
£1.99
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It is the chief point of happiness that a man is willing to be what he is.
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If you like this, try
Gargantua and Pantagruel
François Rabelais
Gargantua and Pantagruel does the same thing, but Rabelais lets his mockery of monks and scholars sprawl into giants, feasts, and five gleeful volumes instead of one tight oration.
£1.99
A Modest Proposal
Jonathan Swift
A Modest Proposal does the same thing, but Swift narrows Erasmus's sprawling, cheerful voice down to one horrifying, deadpan idea and lets it run for only a few merciless pages.
£1.99
Candide
Voltaire
Candide does the same thing, but Voltaire hands the ironic mouthpiece to a wide-eyed young traveler instead of Folly herself, and lets the world's cruelty do the arguing for him.
£1.99
About the book
Folly herself climbs onto the rostrum, cap and bells and all, to deliver an oration in praise of the one subject the learned would never stoop to honour: herself. And she has the better of the argument. Strip away her gifts, she says, and the world simply stops. No one would marry if he saw his bride clearly, no one keep a friend if he tallied every fault, no one consent to be born at all. Every bond we call love rests on some flattering blindness, and she is the goddess who grants it. Erasmus wrote the whole thing in a matter of days at Thomas More's house, its Latin title a pun on his host's name, and for a while it is pure play. Then it turns. The mockery falls on the monks and popes who have built a fortress out of Christ's poverty, until folly itself becomes holy: the foolishness of the cross, the madness of anyone who takes the Gospel at its word. Five centuries on it still laughs, and still means every syllable.