C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Sebastian Brant (1458–1521)
Brandt or Brant, Sebastian (bränt). A celebrated German satirical poet and humanist (1458–1521); born at Strasburg. He was named an imperial councillor by the Emperor Maximilian in 1503, and made count palatine. He was not in sympathy with the Reformers. Though he wrote Latin poems, and treatises on jurisprudence he is remembered as author of ‘The Ship of Fools,’ a satire on the follies and vices of the time (1494). Its distinguishing note is its abounding humor; but it owed its great popular success very largely to the clever woodcuts with which it was illustrated. It was translated into Latin and several European vernacular languages; into English by Henry Watson, ‘The Grete Shyppe of Fooles of the Worlde’ (1517). Barclay’s ‘Shyp of the Folys of the Worlde’ (1508) is in part a translation, in part an adaptation. A more recent imitation is W. H. Ireland’s ‘Modern Ship of Fools’ (1807). (See Critical and Biographical Introduction).