Erasmus Publishes In Praise of Folly

In 1511, the Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus saw the first printing of his satirical Latin essay, Stultitiae Laus, issued in Paris. Erasmus had composed the text two years earlier in 1509 while staying at the Bucklersbury home of his close friend, the English lawyer and scholar Sir Thomas More. Erasmus claimed to have drafted the initial version in the span of a single week. The Latin title Moriae Encomium, translated into English as In Praise of Folly, carried a deliberate pun on More's surname, drawing upon the Greek term moria, meaning folly, and cementing a playful exchange of wit between the two thinkers.

The oration is delivered entirely by the personification of Folly, styled as a goddess who recites an elaborate encomium in her own honor. Modeled after the satirical techniques of the second-century Greek writer Lucian, whom Erasmus and More had recently translated into Latin, Folly boasts that everyday human survival and social harmony depend upon delusion. She presents herself as the offspring of Plutus, the god of wealth, and the nymph Youth, attended by allegorical companions such as self-love, flattery, forgetfulness, laziness, and pleasure. In her opening remarks, she addresses every tier of Renaissance society, mocking princes, writers, hermits, lovers, and dice-players for their self-importance.