ABSTRACT
Writing in the last years of the fifteenth century, and himself a loyal though somewhat backward pupil of the Humanists, Brandt may be said to have given mediaeval Fool-literature its last and crowning work. But i f he closed an epoch, he also initiated one. The Narrenschiff enjoyed the rare good fortune of winning equal popularity in the world of scholars and in that of men who run as they read. Translated into Latin elegiacs by his disciple Locher, it became one of the classics of Humanism; it supplied More with the point of an epigram1, and Erasmus with the conception of his own no doubt infinitely superior Praise of Folly.
