July 26, 2024
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
I recently picked up Rollo May’s The Courage to Create. In it, he wrote a line that struck a chord with the current blog discussion of satire. May wrote, “Certainly Dionysian periods of abandon are valuable, particularly in our mechanized civilization where creativity and the arts are all but starved to death by the routine of punching clocks and attending endless committee meetings, and by the pressures to produce ever greater quantities of papers and books, pressures that have infested the academic world more lethally than the industrial world. I long for the health-giving effects of the periods of ‘carnival,’ such as they still have in the Mediterranean countries.” This directly coincides with some of the articles regarding Erasmus’ Praise of Folly. According to an article Donald Gwynn Watson, published by Cambridge University Press in 1979, Erasmus’ Praise of Folly invokes a sense of carnival. Watson defines carnival as “a licensed inversion of established order, and as a time of renewal and regeneration both for the community, which purged itself of the sins of the past year, and for the individual, who in freeing himself from the madness of everyday prepared himself for the folly of Christ.” Watson also quotes Bakhtin to add: “Carnival laughter is the laughter of all the people. Second, it is universal in scope; it is directed at all and everyone, including the carnival’s participants…. Third, this laughter is ambivalent: it is gay, triumphant, and at the same time mocking, deriding. It asserts and denies, it buries and revives. Such is the laughter of carnival.” So, carnival is meant to entertain everyone. This explains the way in which Erasmus makes fun of the audience while at the same time recognizing that Folly has no other outlet than to speak to an audience. Folly makes fun of herself at the very same time that she criticizes the audience.
And yet, some people cannot take a joke. Sometimes the joke hits too close to home. According to Folly, these sore spots prove that one is overly concerned with their own importance. Basically, if one does not laugh at Folly’s jokes, then one is a fool. Yet also, in laughing at her jokes, we are foolish too because we admit to our own follies. Due to the complicated nature of this paradox, Watson posits that the audience must enter an alternate world to fully enjoy poking fun at ourselves. The reader becomes the audience and the page becomes a stage. As we laugh (and likely cry), we become rejuvenated, lighthearted, free of those weighty cares. The audience is simultaneously on and off stage as we watch ourselves dramatized and ridiculed. Therefore, it is important to notice how Folly addresses the audience. At times she uses an informal “you,” and at other times she switches into a more distant and impersonal third person speech. What seems like an inconsistency may actually be a comment on types of people. Folly feels close to the ones who laugh in lightheartedness. Those who scorn, corrupt, or condemn Folly become impersonal, stiff, and immoral.
Watson arrives at a couple of interesting conclusions. First, he reiterates Bakhtin’s claim that the “carnival spirit offers the chance to have a new outlook on the world, to realize the relative nature of all that exists, and to enter a completely new order of things.” Second, Watson believes that “From Erasmus’ perspective, Carnival is a time which by levelling ranks and mocking traditional ‘wisdom’ leaves man with one remaining certainty: the truth of Christ. In the folly of such certainty lives the joy of faith and promise of salvation.”
I wonder, then, can Praise of Folly be read as a secular text? Does Folly offend believers, and would she care? If she does offend them, what might be the fault that leads to their offense?
We will explore these questions and more in our upcoming Quarterly Discussion. Email as****@*mu.edu for more information and to register. We hope to see you there!
Photo credit: Shutterstock/ Casimiro PT
