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Dutch Proverbs and Ancient Sources in Erasmus's Praise of Folly

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Ari Wesseling
Ari Wesseling*
Affiliation:
Harvard University / University of Amsterdam
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Extract

Clarence Miller, the learned editor and commentator of Erasmus's Praise of Folly, made a challenging remark in a recent issue of Renaissance Quarterly. In discussing a collection of essays on the Moria and the Colloquies,he observes in conclusion that it is “very difficult to say much that is both new and true” about Erasmus's satire. With a view to the flood of secondary literature on the subject, his observation seems quite to the point.

I shall illustrate a number of basic textual ingredients in the Moria whose origin has escaped the attention of Erasmus specialists, namely, Dutch proverbs and expressions. More than once it is Folly herself that suggests she is going to quote from the vernacular.

Type
Studies
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 47 , Issue 2 , Summer 1994 , pp. 351 - 378
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1994

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Footnotes

*

For support in preparing this essay I am indebted to the Constantijn & Christiaan Huygens Program of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). Special thanks are due to Prof. Clarence Miller for his helpful suggestions and for correcting my English. I am further indebted to Ineke Sluiter and my colleagues in the Department of Latin at Amsterdam University for their useful remarks.

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