Learned Joking

Humor in the noble work of reforming the morals of men

Apr 09, 2026

It will be helpful for the reader to know that I’ll be using one of the many updated versions of John Wilson’s 1668 translation because it is in the public domain. However, from time to time, I will reference the paragraph numbers of Mortimer J. Adler’s Great Books Series translation (translated by Betty Radice), mostly for cross referencing.

There is no lack of interpretive enterprise when it comes to Erasmus’s In Praise of Folly. For more more than 500 years, readers and scholars have suggested varying opinions about its meaning, opinions ranging from clandestine anti-Christian conspiracies to Erasmus being carried away by Lady Folly herself i.e., caught up in his own passionate enchantment with paradox.

Even from its debut in 1511, it drew the ire of many his contemporaries, especially the Louvain divines. But, if we are to believe Erasmus himself, Thomas More, to whom “the trifle” was dedicated, and Girardus Listrius, whom Froben, the printer, commissioned to annotate the work, it is a serious work of Christian humanism originally meant for a private, learned audience. In his dedication to More, Erasmus calls his work a “kind of sporting wit,” a “sort of jocose raillery,” that would be mighty pleasing to men of More’s wit and affability, those who are “neither dull nor impertinent.”1

In a letter written in May of 1515, to Martin Dorp, a professor of philosophy at the University of Louvain, Erasmus defends his use of satire, explaining:

For reasons such as this I have persuaded myself to guard my writings from any harm-doing or vengeance and to avoid contaminating them with so much as a mention of evil. Nor did I have any intentions in the Folly different from those in my other works, although the method may have differed. In the Enchiridion I simply set down a design for Christian living. In the pamphlet The Education of a Prince I publicly advised in what subjects a prince ought to be instructed. In the Panegyric, using the form of a eulogy of the prince, I did in an oblique manner the very same thing that in the other book I did openly and directly. So for the Folly: the same thing was done there under the semblance of a jest as was done in the Enchiridion. I wanted to admonish, not to cause pain; to be of benefit, not to vex; to reform the morals of men, not to oppose them.2

Ironically, Dorp was persuaded of the humanist sensibilities after an additional letter from More vouched for the purpose of the work. And when Dorp died in 1525, it was Erasmus who wrote his epitaph.

The humanist impulse that Erasmus championed was moral and religious reform through education and literature instead of schism. And the key to understanding the Folly is recognizing the quality of “learned joking” amongst humanists who were deeply nourished in classical and Christian texts. David Kay asserts, “Folly proves herself a comically backward humanist who reads all the right classical texts, but draws the wrong conclusions, and undercuts her own assertions.”3

Thus, the struggle so many have trying to understand the Folly comes from the mixture of Greek and Latin allusions that are often inverted or misapplied in such a way only those familiar with the texts would recognize the joke. Consider her opening statements to the crowd where she mocks them as having ears like those Midas gave to Pan.4

Throughout “the course of her ironic oration on the indignity of man,” she either contradicts or misinterprets Cicero, Seneca, Plato, Aristotle, Quintilian, Home, Lucian, and Horace.5

Erasmus’s Folly can be viewed as the apotheosis for what some advocates of a humanities education are so often apt to claim: that one of the chief reasons for reading the Great Books is so you can get the jokes.

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