Customer Reviews

In Praise of Folly (Dover Thrift Editions)

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In Praise of Folly (Encomiun Moriae in Latin) was written in 1509 by the Dutchman Erasmus of Rotterdam when he was guest to his English famous friend Thomas More,or Morus if you prefer, the author of the celebrated book Utopia. Given internal religious strife in Europe, and England was in no exception mood, these were pretty much dangerous times and many heads rolled and were to roll, More"s included, due to the persecution by Henry VIII. Whatever was to be said about the nettlesome religious matter had to be done with extrema caution in order to avoid the perilous verdicts of the Holy Tribunal.

Along with Thomas More, Desiderius Erasmus was one of the most important representatives of the Renaissance literary movement in northern Europe and what was casually presented by Erasmus as a booklet inspired by a casual play of words with the surname More (which is almost equal to Moriae, madness in Greek), was in fact an attempt to salvage what should be rescued of the Classical Greek Antiquity in Erasmus' opinionated argument and incorporated in the Christian thought of the time. Beneath an almost non-descript façade was an issue of utmost significance to the evolution of the so-called Natural Sciences, that were to benefit from advances of recent discoveries in Physics, Chemistry and later on Biology, but which were hindered to evolve by the so-called aristotelian taint inherited by the Scholastic medieveal tradition so dear to the traditionalist Catholic Church, a task difficult in itself but which Erasmus easily outdone with a satyrical style that offended no one, preserving all the respect to the Church hierarchy and its dogmas and, most importantly, the figure of Jesus Christ.

The book is in fact a small one but the reader is much rewarded by the richness of its content, where the author takes him by his hands and strolls with him trough ancient Greek and Roman mithology in a verbose prose at the same time easy, vigorous and stimulating, where one is impressed by the author's astounding erudiction, as if he was a northern true inheritor of the Tuscan Dante Aligheri (the Divine Comedy) in this purpose. This is certainly one of the best literary works of late Renaissance and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

In praise of folly is a must read for anyone interested in the humanist movement in the late middle ages, in the middle of the religious wars. Erasmus was a brilliant writer, who mocks about everybody in this book, but subtle. He wrote it in honour of Thomas More, he was also a friend of Martin Luther, but remained Roman Catholic. He also founded the 'Collegium Trilingue' where they tought Greek, Roman and Hebrew, in Louvain, Flanders.

This is the worst translation into English from any language I have ever read. Totally unidiomatic, whether in 16th-century or 21st-century English. It reads like a bad machine translation. If it were free, it would be laughable; at $.95, the joke's on me.

I got this book for a history class I'm taking on the Renaissance & Reformation. The book itself isn't very long, but for me it was really hard to focus on the text and completely comprehend what I was reading-- so it wasn't a quick read for me. When I was able to focus hard enough on what I was reading to understand it, it proved to provide some humor though. So it is my personal opinion that this is an enjoyable book so long as you are more intelligent and have a longer attention span than I, as the average college student, do.

Desiderius Erasmus was surely the most logical and objective viewer of Europe's plight in the early 16th century. He was a reformer without being an extremist, and a Catholic without being a slave to superstition or conservatism, truly the quintessential intellectual.