The Praise of Folly

Chicago, IL : Packard and Company / University Classics, 1946 Packard and Company / University Classics, 1946. Hardcover. Reprint edition of the 1511 original. Book is tight, square, and unmarked. Book Condition: Very Good; light bumping to head and tail; light shelfwear to head, tail, and tips. No DJ. Khaki cloth boards and spine with gilt lettering in black shadowboxes on the spine. Clean internals. Interior hinges are sound and not split. 152 pp 8vo. In Praise of Folly begins with a satirical learned encomium, in which Folly praises herself, in the manner of the Greek satirist Lucian (2nd century AD), whose work Erasmus and Sir Thomas More had recently translated into Latin; it then takes a darker tone in a series of orations, as Folly praises self-deception and madness and moves to a satirical examination of pious but superstitious abuses of Catholic doctrine and corrupt practices in parts of the Roman Catholic Church—to which Erasmus was ever faithful—and the folly of pedants. Erasmus had recently returned disappointed from Rome, where he had turned down offers of advancement in the curia, and Folly increasingly takes on Erasmus' own chastising voice. The essay ends with a straightforward statement of Christian ideal: "No Man is wise at all Times, or is without his blind Side." A clean very presentable copy.