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The Metamorphoses of Moria: Structure and Meaning in The Praise of Folly

1974; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 89; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/461582

1938-1530

Wayne A. Rebhorn,

French Literature and Criticism

Following Moria's metamorphoses, Erasmus' Praise falls into three sections whose interrelationships generate the total meaning of the work. Moving from section to section, Folly leads her auditors through a dialectic of conversion. At first ironic, Folly is the goddess of metamorphosis, a variant of Circe, offering men her gift of pleasurable illusion. She wants them to accept life as a comic play and attacks the “Stoic” for attempting self-divinization while rejecting the play of life. She argues that her power can make men happy in Plato's cave. But in the satirical middle section, Folly betrays them by showing them the real tragedy of their lot. While revealing that one cannot separate lifepreserving, pleasurable folly from destructive madness, by her transformation into a “Stoic” truth-teller, Folly prevents men from placing their faith in her benevolence. Thus, in the final section, she turns with them to Christian folly, the faith that leads men out of Plato's cave to God's unchanging, benevolent reality. Folly's final, ecstatic vision gives her followers a transcendent perspective redefining and including the comitragic visions of the first two sections.