Desiderius Erasmus · Philosophy
Erasmus’s wittiest book lets the goddess <em>Folly</em> mount the rostrum and praise herself - a mock oration that, under cover of a joke, exposes the vanity of scholars, courtiers, and churchmen, and ends by daring to call true Christianity a holy kind of folly.
You learned that Erasmus wrote a mock encomium : Folly praises herself, and that ironic device lets him satirize every rank of society with deniability, before turning serious at the end with the ‘folly of the Cross.’ Explain why speaking through Folly was more than a trick - why the fool’s mask was…
Leads to Thomas More.
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