The Ship of Fools

Sebastian Brant was born in Strassburg, France, in 1457 and studied at Basel, Switzerland, where he became a lecturer. When Basel joined the Swiss Confederacy, he returned to Strassburg and became the town clerk. He was the author of a number of political and religious pamphlets. Katherine Anne Porter drew on Das Narrenschiff (1497) for her novel Ship of Fools. Brant's parody of the late medieval period depicts life as a paradise for simpletons. It is a series of rhymed sermons excoriating sin and folly with grotesque satire. The crew of a seabound vessel is made up of 112 fools, each representing a foible of humankind. This was the first book written in German to achieve great international popularity. It was translated into Low German, Latin, French, English, and other languages. In 1509, Alexander Barclay translated an early edition of the work. Brant died in 1521.