As modern curricula divide up the teaching of literature according to the language in which it was written, there isn't much room for a displaced person like Erasmus. He always described himself as a citizen of Rotterdam, but in fact his mother moved there only to conceal the birth of a son whom his father could never acknowledge because he was already in holy orders. Whether Erasmus could ever speak fluent Dutch is in question; he certainly never wrote in that tongue, and never resided in his native city--if it was his native city--any longer than he had to.

This Norton Critical Edition provides a wide selection of Erasmus's writings, translated from the Latin into fresh, modern, and witty English. Besides the justly famous Praise of Folly, Robert M. Adams has included the political "Complaint of Peace," the brutal antipapal satire "Julius Excluded from Heaven," two versions of his important preface to the Latin translation of the New Testament, and a selection both serious and comic of his Colloquies and his letters. Adams has made these selections to emphasize the humane, rather than the doctrinaire, side of the first and greatest humanist.

Critical commentary is provided in essays by H. R. TrevorRoper, R. S. Allen, J. Huizinga, Mikhail Bakhtin, Paul Oskar Kristeller, and Robert M. Adams.

Editor's Preface

Selections from the Writings

 The Praise of Folly

Author's Preface

The Praise of Folly

 The Complaint of Peace

 Two Forewords to the Latin Translation of the New

Testament

Paraclesis: or, An Exhortation (1516)

Foreword to the Third Edition (1522)

 Julius Excluded from Heaven

  From The Colloquies

The Alchemy Seam

The Religious Feast

An Inquisition into Faith

The Abbot and the Learned Lady

  Letters

To Martin Dorp (May 1515) [A Defense of Folly]

To Beatus Rhenanus (ca. 15 October 1518) [The Hardships

  of Travel]

To Peter Tomiczi, Bishop of Cracow (31 August 1535)

  [A Tempered Perspective]

Critical Commentary

  H. R. Trevor-Roper · Desiderius Erasmus

  R. S. Allen · The Transalpine Renaissance

  I. Huizinga · Erasmus's Mind

 Mikhail Bakhtin · [Medieval and Renaissance Folk Humor]

 Paul Oskar Kristeller · Erasmus from an Italian Perspective

 Robert M. Adams Draining and Filling: A Few Benchmarks

in the History of Humanism

Erasmus: A Chronology

Selected Bibliography