Everything about Sebastian Brant totally explained
Sebastian Brant (also
Brandt) (
1457 –
May 10,
1521),
Alsatian humanist and
satirist, was born in
Strasbourg.
He studied at
Basel, took the degree of doctor of law in 1489, and for some time held a professorship of
jurisprudence there. Returning to Strasbourg, he was made
syndic of the town, remaining there for the rest of his life.
He first attracted attention in humanistic circles by his
Latin poetry, and edited many ecclesiastical and legal works; but he's now only known by his famous satire,
Das Narrenschiff (1494), the popularity and influence of which were not limited to Germany. Under the form of an
allegory, a ship laden with fools and steered by fools goes to the fools' paradise of Narragonia. Brant here lashes with unsparing vigour the weaknesses and vices of his time. Here he conceives
Saint Grobian, whom he imagines to be the
patron saint of vulgar and coarse people.
Although, like most of the German humanists, essentially conservative in his religious views, Brant's eyes were open to the abuses in the church, and the
Narrenschiff was a most effective preparation for the
Protestant Reformation.
Alexander Barclay's
Ship of Fools (1509) is a free imitation of the German poem, and a Latin version by
Jacobus Locher (1497) was hardly less popular than the German original.
There is also a large quantity of other "fool literature." Nigel, called
Wireker (fl. 1190), a monk of
Christ Church Priory,
Canterbury, wrote a satirical
Speculum stultorum, in which the ambitious and discontented monk figured as the ass Brunellus, who wanted a longer tail. Brunellus, who was educated in
Paris, decides to found an order of fools, which shall combine the good points of all the existing monastic orders.
Cock Lovell's Bate (printed by
Wynkyn de Worde, c. 1510) is another imitation of the
Narrenschiff. Cock Lovell is a fraudulent
currier who gathers round him a rascally collection of tradesmen. They sail off in a riotous fashion up hill and down dale throughout
England. Brant's other works, of which the chief was a version of
Freidank's
Bescheidenheit (1508), are of inferior interest and importance.
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