The Western Canon

Praise of Folly is a satirical project worthy of Pope and Rabelais. Like Pope, Erasmus in his philosophical essay attacks several aspects of human existence, and I think especially in the age of what Prof. Harold Bloom has labelled ‘the School of Resentment’, Erasmus some 500 years before was in agreement:

“Now for the charge of biting sarcasm. My answer is that the intelligent have always enjoyed freedom to exercise their wit on the common life of man, and with impunity (…) this makes me marvel all the more at the sensitivity of present-day ears which can bear to hear practically nothing but honorific titles.”

And like Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel, Erasmus’s In Praise of Folly viciously attacks the establishment, especially the Church—how it was run, its deep-rooted corruption; hence the later Reformation. And Erasmus does so (like Rabelais) in a fashion that is superbly comic and features erudition of the highest kind.

Take the treatment of: “The ordinary life of Christians everywhere abounds in the varieties of silliness, and they are readily permitted and encouraged by priests who are not unaware of the profit to be made thereby.”

The satire and critique are palpable. Catholic priests and their practices were of serious concern for Erasmus. It was what Luther later (though through heated uprising, the method opposite to Erasmus’s humanistic view in which reason was to conquer) took with him—despite his departure from Erasmus—as he nailed his 95 Theses in Wittenberg.

Another of Erasmus’s critique points is being ‘driven by emotion’, which is a crucial theme comically treated by both Erasmus and Rabelais. In Folly, Erasmus writes: “(…) all the emotions belong to Folly, and this is what marks the wise man off from the fool; he is ruled by reason, the fool by his emotions.”

I find this observation (though not new, it is seen in a variety of ancient scholars: Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, etc.) particularly important for how literature is being treated by modern Foucauldian/Marxist ‘scholars’—such scholars as they are.

Praise of Folly was published before Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel, and Rabelais did express gratitude for Erasmus’s writings. It is as a big Rabelais fan that I feel strongly indebted to Praise of Folly, as it is a gentle precursor to one of my favourite works, Gargantua and Pantagruel.