ABSTRACT

Stocknarren, Schalksnarren, Geldnarren, Frej3narren: if the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is true that language reveals the organization and categorization of mental experience in a particular culture, then the experience of fools and folly in Renaissance Germany was indeed broad and varied (Whorf 212 ff.) . Whereas the 1568 Book of Trades by Jost Amman and Hans Sachs was content to enumerate the four types of Narren found above (natural fools, jesters, money fools, and gluttonous fools), Sebastian Brant distinguished over a hundred varieties in the first edition of The Ship of Fools from 1494. The success of Brant's work, including subsequent editions in Latin, French, English, and Dutch (Lemmer 175-76), contributed to a detailed taxonomy of foolish types that soon spread throughout Europe. The resulting Narrenliteratur flourished in sixteenth-century Germany, aided in no small part by Erasmus's Praise of Folly (1509; published 1511).1 Carnival plays,fabliaux, and even sermons employed the fool not only as a representative of human weaknesses, but also as a guileless speaker of truth, capable of exposing the hypocrisies of others.