fool’s literature

fool’s literature, allegorical satires popular throughout Europe from the 15th to the 17th century, featuring the fool (q.v.), or jester, who represented the weaknesses, vices, and grotesqueries of contemporary society. The first outstanding example of fool’s literature was Das Narrenschiff (1494; “The Ship of Fools”), a long poem by the German satirist Sebastian Brant, in which more than 100 fools are gathered on a ship bound for Narragonia, the fools’ paradise. An unsparing, bitter, and sweeping satire, especially of the corruption in the Roman Catholic church, Das Narrenschiff was translated into Latin, Low German, Dutch, and French and adapted in English by Alexander Barclay (The Shyp of Folys of the Worlde, 1509). It stimulated the development of biting moral satires such as Thomas Murner’s poem Narrenbeschwörung (1512; “Exorcism of Fools”) and Erasmus’ Encomium moriae (1509; In Praise of Folly). The American writer Katherine Anne Porter used Brant’s title for her Ship of Fools (1962), an allegorical novel in which the German ship Vera is a microcosm of life.