Humor and Criticism in Erasmuss Praise of Folly
Humor and Criticism in Praise of Folly
Erasmus’s Praise of Folly is a humor-filled satire of pretty much everything. It is filled with wit and sarcasm which make light of serious problems and blow insignificant issues out of proportion all the while bringing a smile to the reader’s face. It is not stinging humor at the expense of others (unless, of course, the shoe fits), rather it is directed towards everyone. Erasmus even includes himself in the joke, practically parodying himself in the first section (xvi). In Praise of Folly, Erasmus uses this humor to criticize without the harsh judgment of seriousness. His humor parallels the import of his subject. When Folly discusses the issues most significant to Erasmus, she loses her jocularity and ironic tone, whereas in her first voice, Folly laughs at those whose foolish ways are reason for criticism but not for scorn.
This section finds great ironic humor in the folly of all types of conceit, pointing out that the most condescending of people have little reason for such egotism. Folly laughs at the conceit of “the general run of gentry and scholars” with their “distorted sense of modesty” (11) including “those who lay special claim to be called the personification of wisdom, even though they strut about ‘like apes in purple’ and ‘asses in lion-skins’” (13). Folly, of course, is guilty of this most of all in dedicating a whole book to praising herself, and she admits the great folly behind this when she asks, “What could be more fitting than for Folly to trumpet her own merits abroad and ‘sing her own praises’” (11). Erasmus jokes about this type of conceit because it is innocent and commonplace. His point is to en...
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...art for any lack of seriousness. Here we see the culmination of Folly’s progression towards Erasmus’s most serious subject and away from humor.
Erasmus demonstrates the value of humor by making fun of insignificant issues and teaching us how to laugh at ourselves. “Jokes of this kind . . . which aren’t lacking in learning and wit” (4) help us put the less significant aspects of life in perspective. They also aim to moderate the level of his criticism making it more constructive than insulting. For it is “the ridiculous rather than the squalid” (7) to which his humor applies. He reserves a more serious voice for more serious wrongdoing. We see this parallel between humor and subject clearly as Erasmus progresses from constructive criticism of insignificant folly to harsh indictment of religious pretension and most of all in his solemn praise of Christian folly.
There is a tremendous difference between a fool and a jester. Fools are regarded as light-hearted, dim-witted, and absent-minded people whose outrageous stupidity amused the rest of the population. These jovial folk represented the lowest in society: too carefree to get ahead in society and too stupid to care. Many people believed that Jan Steen, a prominent and well-educated artist of the Dutch Golden Age, was a fool. It is not a far-fetched assumption to make since he donned the appearance of a fool in his own paintings. However Steen was no fool. Much like the history of jesters, Jan Steen’s unsavory appearances in his own work is often misunderstood and taken at face value. To look into Steen’s own depictions of his life in his paintings one might completely agree that he is a foolish drunkard who happened to be blessed with the ability to paint. It is interesting, then, to realize that Steen is more jester than fool, especially in his self portraits. In medieval times the only person who could get away with insulting the king and royal family was the court jester. Jesters would use their quick wit, silver tongues, and superior intellect to insult or comment on the presiding royalty and would often be received with thunderous laughter and applause. Steen, much like the jester, used a foolish appearance to give social commentary on the world around him. One of the best examples of this is in Steen’s “The Continence of Scipio” (see Figure 1). A goofy cast of characters replace the traditionally serious and dignified roles of the figures in the classic story but none so ridiculous as the narcissistic husband, Aluccius (who looks suspiciously like Stee...
Philostratus, Eunapius, Wilmer Cave France. Wright, and Eunapius. The Lives of the Sophists. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1989. Print.
Voltaire’s satirical novella Candide tells the story a young man who, having been raised in a secluded utopia and educated in philosophical optimism, is suddenly thrust into the world and forced to make sense of the evil and suffering around him that he has always been taught to reason away. As his journey progresses and he encounters numerous horrors, Candide increasingly struggles to accept his tutor’s theory that all is for the best, and it ultimately becomes apparent that he has lost faith in his tutor’s philosophy. I argue that Candide’s gradual loss of faith in his tutor, Pangloss, was the result of the contradictions he increasingly observed between Pangloss’ philosophy and his lived experiences. This loss of faith in Pangloss’ philosophy was significant because it led Candide to begin to rely on reason rather than faith, acknowledge the existence of evil, and replace passivity with positive action, while simultaneously demonstrating to the reader the importance of doing so. Following a brief explanation of Pangloss’ philosophy, this will be illustrated by examining several of the conflicting incidents Candide experienced and the impact his loss of faith had on both him and the reader.
Works Cited Voltaire, Francois-Marie Arouet de. Candide. The Norton Anthology of Word Masterpieces. The Western Tradition. Ed. Hugo, et al. 2nd ed. Vol. 1. New York: Norton, 1999.
In 1509 Desiderius Erasmus had just returned from Rome, where he refused to join the Roman Curia and instead wrote an essay detailing the exploitations of the Roman Catholic Church. Praise of the Folly is a satirical panegyric work by Erasmus in which he speaks through Folly using the metaphor of Silenus as a focal point to address the church and its allies. Erasmus uses this metaphor of Silenus and the image of the Silenus box as a vehicle to shape the entire novel in order to respond and discourse the underlying madness in Roman Catholic Church’s doctrine and practices.
Rather than a flurry of impersonal communications, Erasmus and More strongly used their In that first letter, Erasmus wrote that he ‘grew sick’ for want of both More and his handwriting, i.e. his physical presence and the inner thoughts of his soul. In our present circumstances, many people meet online. Here they imagine true friendships have come about. Although they may have seen pictures of their friend, nothing, I mean nothing can take the place of a physical encounter with a person. Here there is a natural epistemology of the dignity of this person. Their existence although conceptual before, becomes actual in the intellect. Many friendships fail because they lack initial physical encounter beyond impersonal office politics or school settings; it requires, as een by the life of these two men, and extra step to create an external and personal
Voltaire was and always will be known as a satirist, famous for his use of humor to express his ridicule of institutionalized ideals set in place during the 1700’s. In Voltaire’s Candide, he makes a point to address the absurdities of pursuing an optimistic ideal. Voltaire uses a sense of humorous disregard for those of great stature, making a mockery of what is perceived as ideal. Optimism, a strong ideal during the Enlightenment, is an approach to life with the basic assumption that everything happens for a reason and even if it seems evil, it is actually for the greater good per God’s control. Dr. Pangloss serves as a philosophical tutor to Candide, accompanying him throughout the story. Through the use of satire, Voltaire uses the character of Dr. Pangloss to embody all that is optimistic, ensuring Candide that this world he lives in is “the best of all possible worlds” (Voltaire, 1). Of all the things Voltaire satirized in the story of Candide, this single quote encompasses all subsequent instances of
One of the satirical styles is the use of irony, which entails saying of something that is the opposite of what one means (Baxindine). An example of irony that Voltaire makes use of is when he says “Master Pangloss, the greatest philosopher of the whole province and consequently of the whole world” (Voltaire 2). The sense of irony comes out from the fact that being the greatest philosopher in the province does not necessarily mean that one is the best in the whole world. Voltaire is only trying to satirize the actions of Pangloss of faking smartness because Pangloss talks as if he knows all about the world, although it seems like the philosophies have complications without much depth as such.
The eighteenth century is known as history’s greatest age of satire. Social reformers used satire as a weapon to draw attention to the vast contradictions between morals and manners, intentions and actions, and between the Enlightenment aspirations and contemporary degradation. In France, Francois-Marie Arouet, who used the pen name Voltaire, was inspired by Swift’s satires. Voltaire described human folly as a universal condition. In his writing, he described bigotry as a man-made evil, and injustice as institutional evil. He advocated for freedom of thought and expression. In 1717, his satires led to his imprisonment in the Bastille, a French prison. In his satirical masterpiece, Candide, Voltaire mocked optimism where Candide, the main character, kept saying this is “the best of all possible worlds” as he encountered repeated horrors. Candide remains the classic statement of comic skepticism in Western literature.
Harris, Jocelyn. “Sappho, Souls, and the Salic Law of Wit.” Anticipations of the Enlightenment in England, France, and Germany. Ed by Alan Charles Kors and Paul J. Korshin. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987.
The Effective Satire of Voltaire's Candide In Candide, Voltaire sought to point out the fallacy of Gottfried Leibniz's theory of optimism and the hardships brought on by the resulting inaction toward the evils of the world. Voltaire's use of satire, and its techniques of exaggeration and contrast, highlight the evil and brutality of war and the world in general when men are meekly accepting of their fate. Leibniz, a German philosopher and mathematician of Voltaire's time, developed the idea that the world they were living in at that time was "the best of all possible worlds. " This systematic optimism shown by Leibniz is the philosophical system that believed everything was for the best, no matter how terrible it seemed. In this satire, Voltaire shows the world full of natural disasters and brutality.
To talk about Candide is to talk about one of the most well-known books ever written. Voltaire’s use of satire to criticize just about any and all aspects of life in 18th century France, the surrounding countries, and the New World. However, no subject in Voltaire’s literary line of fire took as much of a hit as religion/religious figures, especially the Catholic Church. In Candide, Voltaire hits the Church from every angle, from its priests’ self-promoted abstinence, to the exorbitant wealth of the Vatican, to their presence in the New World.
The clown contributes towards the humourous entertainment of this play through his numerous puns and jokes. He is a source of laughter, not because we are humoured by his "foolery"; for he proves to be no fool at all; but rather because he amuses us with his brilliant wit. Having mastered the art of jesting, Feste is sensitive of his profession, always aware of the circumstances he is in and the appropriateness of this folly.
The fool or folly is mostly associated with the theatrical profession due to William Shakespeare’s common use of the fool or jester characters in his plays. But what most people don’t know is that the fool has been present in western society well before Shakespeare was known as a playwright. The fool first appeared in literature during the 15th to the 17th century, representing the vices, grotesqueries and weaknesses of contemporary society at that time. According to encyclopaedia Britannica (2014) fools literature (p. 1), the first great example of fools literature was, Das NarrenSchiff (1494; ‘The ship of fools’), a didactic and allegorical poem by German humanist and poet Sebastian Brant, in which people society deemed as fools were gathered and shipped off to what Brant described in the poem as, ‘the fool’s paradise’ (Brant, 1944).
...er and moralistic laughter, a laughter that proclaims come kind of disease. Even as we move out of the Elizabethan period and towards the eighteenth century, absurdism took a place in the literature. According to The Origins of English Nonsense by Noel Malcolm, long before the acknowledged masterpieces of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear, before the English reached their nonsensical apogee in the reign of Victoria, a few privileged Elizabethans were already developing a surreal and proto-Carrollean sense of humour. (16) The outcome of this period is the English nonsense poetry. In some cases, the humor of nonsense verse is based on the incompatibility of phrases which make grammatical sense butsemantic nonsense at least in certain interpretations, as in the traditional: