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INTRODUCTION
HE Praise of Folly is a part of the so-called
‘Fool Literature’ produced by the fer¬
ment of new ideas which preceded the Reforma¬
tion. Men had discovered fresh standards, old
formulas were tested, and the discrepancies
between principle and practice became more
apparent. ‘There was a widespread attempt to
cure the evils which had crept into the mediaeval
Church and those which vitiated the body politic.
Satire is a sharp instrument to cut away the
blinding film of custom, and writers strove to
convince a fool of his folly by showing him him¬
self. Yet human nature is slow to change, it is
easier to see faults than to amend them: in the
twentieth century men are very much as they
were in the fifteenth, still, for instance, buying
books which they do not read, like the first
fool who embarked in the ‘ Narrenschiff ’.
This was the title of the book which set the
fashion in fools. Its author, Sebastian Brant
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