The Praise of Folly: A Rhymed English Verse Version of the Original Latin Prose

By Charles Packard

By his own account, Desiderius Erasmus, a Dutch monk and scholar, wrote his 1509 Latin prose masterpiece, The Praise of Folly, "in seven days, more or less" while a guest at the London home of his friend and fellow humanist, Sir Thomas More. Friends with whom Erasmus shared his manuscript arranged its publication in Paris in 1511 in an unauthorized edition. Erasmus, surprised but pleased by the immediate popularity of the work, revised it seven times, with thirty-six editions appearing during his lifetime.

The Praise of Folly is a transcript of a lecture delivered in a university hall to an audience of scholars. The lecturer is the goddess Folly, a persona invented by Erasmus. Folly has chosen herself as her subject. Her incongruous costume, a scholar's robe but the belled hat of a jester, suggests (correctly) that her words will be a mix of the serious with the hilarious. Throughout the lecture, she makes her case that foolishness, not rational thought, benefits mankind more. Readers will note that most of the human foibles discussed by Folly remain with us today.

This version of The Praise of Folly, the first in verse, was written to commemorate the 500th anniversary of this enduring work's creation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Sep 23, 2009
• ISBN: 9781440123641

Charles Packard

CHARLES PACKARD studied Latin at Bowdoin College and Harvard University, and his translations of Caesar, Horace, and Erasmus have appeared in The Classical Journal and The Classical Outlook. He is also the author of several English textbooks, grades 3–12, centered on academic writing. Stephen Costanza designed the front cover and artwork.

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Copyright © 2009 Charles Packard.

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This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents,

organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products

of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-1-4401-2362-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4401-2363-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4401-2364-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2009933570

iUniverse rev. date:  10/15/2021

For my

late wife, Pam,

and for our grandson, Jeb

dedication%20photo.jpg

CHARLES PACKARD studied classical languages at Bowdoin and at Harvard. He then taught Latin at two New England boarding schools, Middlesex School and Phillips Academy (Andover). During his teaching tenure at both schools, he twice won the annual essay contest of the National Association of Independent Schools, first for The Marriage of Latin and English: Modern Myth, and then for Latin Methodology: The Confessions of an Anti-Pedant. During those years, he also published rhymed-verse versions of Caesar, Horace, and Erasmus in The Classical Journal and The Classical Outlook. He left teaching to accept a position as an English editor at Random House and, two years later, moved to McGraw-Hill as Chief Editor, Secondary English. While there, and for several years afterward as an independent author, he wrote over thirty English textbooks, grades 3–12, on topics ranging from figurative language to functional writing. In retirement, he returned to the teaching of Latin in 1995 in grade 8 at the Ashwood Waldorf School in Rockport, Maine, where in some years he also taught a course in the history of language to students in grade 7. He recently retired as a teacher of Latin and English in grades 9–12 at the Watershed School in Rockland, Maine. This first volume, of two, covers slightly under two-thirds of the text of The Praise of Folly. The second volume, dealing almost exclusively with theological matters, is a work in progress.

Preface

This rhymed English verse version of The Praise of Folly, a Latin prose work, is the first in any language to be written in verse. Why verse? The idea occurred to me while reading Hoyt Hopewell Hudson’s remarks on the tradition of fool literature in the introduction to his English translation of The Praise of Folly (Princeton University Press: 1941). There I learned that the benchmark work of that tradition, Sebastian Brant’s 1494 Narrenschiff (Ship of Fools), was written in his Swabian dialect in easy verses and, further, that the more popular of its two contemporary English translations, Alexander Barclay’s 1509 Ship of Folys of the World, was written in rhymed verse. Somewhere in those facts—and again in a more thorough review of fool literature and drama by Clarence H. Miller (see the acknowledgments)—I found a precedent of sorts (but perhaps merely an excuse) for doing a verse version of The Praise of Folly.

My choice of verse was also influenced by other, perhaps more objective, factors. The work’s frequent classical allusions and proverbs, most of which require footnoting, make The Praise of Folly an especially slow read even in a modern idiomatic prose translation. And there are other textual difficulties the reader must somehow overcome. Transitions from one line of thought to the next are, in some cases, rather careless, while those that do show care are not always followed by the subject matter seemingly promised. There are some instances where Folly’s point of view directly contradicts one expressed earlier in her speech. The tradition in Erasmian criticism explains these and other apparent compositional lapses by asserting that they were intentional, that Erasmus was simply trying to reflect the fact that, with Folly at the lectern, scatterbrained elements of style and substance are to be expected. Fair enough. Yet the author’s brilliance in providing a consistent persona for Folly makes it difficult for most readers to follow her arguments, foolish (or not) as they might be, without the ongoing intervention of the translator, again in the form of footnotes.

To counter these and other problems the work poses for its modern readers, I turned to verse. I felt that a rhymed-verse version might be able to smooth the work’s rough spots, quicken its reading pace, repackage its unavoidable but hitherto distracting footnotes, and make clearer its wit and humor (including its puns). I also saw value in the surprise element of rhyme and its power to pull readers from one point to the next as they subconsciously seek the resolution of each rhyme. That is a welcome feature when translating a work that, even when rendered in lively prose, cannot avoid bringing its readers to abrupt halts. Further, and of course most important of all, I was reasonably confident that I could reach my goals without diluting Folly’s presentation or altering her persona, certainly one of the most imaginative in all of literature.

Yet, this version of The Praise of Folly differs from all previous translations of the work in ways other than its use of verse. Some details not found in the original text have been added here and there in order to make certain that the aptness of Folly’s classical allusions does not go unnoticed and unappreciated. These additions offer information typically found in translators’ footnotes to The Praise of Folly, but here they appear, numbered in the manner of footnotes, as parts of the running verse itself. A few of the original work’s redundant details—such as some of the items in a lengthy series—have not been retained in this version, and the steps in some of Folly’s arguments have been reordered in an effort to provide for each a straighter path from premise to conclusion. Although the original work is a monologue, I break that pattern in one of the subsections by having Folly invite questions and comments from her audience, and I modernize the setting further by having Folly employ a slide projector at one point early in her speech. Later in her speech (volume 2), I twice depart from the original presentation when I bring Erasmus in person to the lectern to speak briefly to Folly’s audience. His two surprise guest appearances occur at points in the speech where, as several scholars have noted, Erasmus himself, and not his goddess mouthpiece, seems to be doing the talking. These surface gimmicks, in my view, enliven and clarify the flow of Folly’s argument. By no means are they authorial conceits. Yet it follows from their use—and is freely conceded here—that mine is by no means a word-by-word literal translation of the original. Rather, my treatment of the piece could more accurately be called a scanslation.

Neither the Latin original nor any one of its many translations includes headings and subheadings marking the various major and minor topics Folly covers in her speech. I have written such headings for this version to help the reader track the progress of the various arguments. The headings do not in all cases conform with the formal divisions of the classical encomium as superimposed on this work by, among others, Hoyt Hopewell Hudson and Jacques Chomarat (Grammaire et Rhetorique Chez Erasme: Paris Societe: Edition: 1981). Instead, the headings resemble those a student today might jot down if taking outline notes during Folly’s lecture. All headings, major and minor, appear here in the Outline of Folly’s Speech, immediately preceding the lecture. Taken in their entirety, these headings constitute what is perhaps the most detailed outline of Folly’s speech available anywhere.

Acknowledgments

My work was made much easier by what one translator, recognizing his own reliance on previous translations, called the legwork of better scholars. Hoyt Hopewell Hudson’s translation with essay and commentary created my interest in Erasmus in the first place. As indicated earlier, his commentary on fool literature and his formal outline of Folly’s speech also informed my approach to the present work. Readers of Betty Radice’s translation (Penguin Books: 1971) clearly see the speaker in her setting and are at no time allowed to forget that they are reading the transcript of a speech. I have attempted in my own work to produce the same effect.

I owe my greatest debt by far to Clarence H. Miller, Dorothy McBride Orthwein Professor of English at Saint Louis University. His richly annotated Latin text (North-Holland Publishing Company: 1979) and his spirited translation with introduction and commentary (Yale University Press: 1979) are, in each category, the first to take into account the changes Erasmus made in The Praise of Folly in the course of revising seven editions during the years 1512 to 1532. My reliance on both works cannot be overstated. With my Greek courses well in the past, I am especially grateful to Professor Miller for his English renderings of Folly’s occasional remarks in that language. Professor Miller also replied graciously when I took the liberty of writing to him with questions about certain ambiguous or otherwise confusing aspects of the work. With his kind permission, I have borrowed freely from the trove of his translation’s especially apt word choices (sniffish and snappish are two that come immediately to mind!). Hoyt Hopewell Hudson wrote of Erasmus that he refused to allow his scholarship to kill his humanity. Those words also describe Clarence H. Miller.

I am grateful, too,