SOURCE: Classen, Albrecht. “‘Von erfahrung aller land’—Sebastian Brant's Narrenschiff: A Document of Social, Intellectual, and Mental History.” Fifteenth-Century Studies 26 (2001): 52-65.

[In the following essay, Classen explores what insights The Ship of Fools provides for understanding the daily mental, social, economic, and political conditions of late medieval life.]

Talking about Sebastian Brant is like discussing one of the many literary giants within the history of German literature, such as Wolfram von Eschenbach, Oswald von Wolkenstein, Martin Luther, and Andreas Gryphius.¹ On the one hand, his didactic texts, poems, and narratives invite ever new criticism and analysis because of the breadth and complexity of his poetic works;² on the other, almost every aspect of his texts seems to have been discussed in previous scholarship.³ But since his Narrenschiff, which first appeared in print in 1494, examines, as its title indicates, the entire world and human society on a large scale, a wide range of analytic avenues are possible, which readily offer new insights and perceptions regarding the author's messages and ideas. One of the less trodden paths into the Narrenschiff will be explored here. Let us, however, first summarize our basic knowledge of Brant's biography.

Brant was one of the most profound and prolific writers of his times, but also a very active man who was involved in many political, academic, clerical, and philosophical activities during his life. His use of the printing press, both professionally to earn money and as a means to disseminate his personal views about political, religious, and cultural events, brought him into contact with a wide range of local and global issues.⁴ His many broadsheets—twenty-seven have come down to us, although many more seem to have been published—treat topics such as religious instruction, political events, natural phenomena such as meteorites (1492), birth defects of animals and people (1495/96), and floodings, as symbols of God's wrath and as a warning for people to confess their sins and to reform their lifestyles (1496).⁵ Brant was, above all, worried about the dangers resulting from the Turks who slowly but surely moved into the European heartlands.⁶ His broadsheets were not the only ones, though, to deal with this political and military issue, as we can tell from the rich body of similar publications from the entire sixteenth century.⁷ Other themes and narrative elements which struck a familiar chord in Brant were didactic teachings, moralistic instructions, table manners, education, and so forth.

When he composed his Narrenschiff in 1494, he could look back to an accomplished career as a scholar, teacher, publisher, and lawyer.⁸ He had begun with his university studies in 1475 in Basel, which was at that time an important center of the humanistic movement in German-speaking countries. After having completed his Baccalaureus in Liberal Arts, Brant turned to law and finished his advanced degree in 1484, and in 1489 earned his doctorate in law. Nevertheless, his main occupation was to be a “publication expert and adviser for the Basel book printers.”⁹ Politically he strongly supported Emperor Maximilian I (crowned in 1486) and the Pope in his reform efforts. In 1501 Brant returned to his native Strassburg to assume the position of city clerk of chancellor and greatly influenced the literary circles there. Erasmus passed through Strassburg in 1514 on his way from England to Basel and was deeply impressed by Brant's intellect, knowledge, and leadership of the city's literary society. Erasmus himself founded such a society in Basel afterwards, copying Brant's example. In later years the poet and administrator fell ill and was very pessimistic about the future of the Holy Roman Empire and the fate of the Church. He died in 1521, four years after Martin Luther had ignited the storm leading to the Protestant Reformation and (in many ways) the ‘end’ of the Middle Ages.¹⁰ Not surprisingly, Brant's didactic verse treatise Narrenschiff with which he ridiculed his entire contemporary society became a major success on the early modern book markets and was well received as a significant force in transforming late-medieval German culture into a modern world oriented toward and based upon thoughts representative of the Renaissance and Humanism.¹¹

To advance a new interpretation of Brant's Narrenschiff might be a foolish thing and could even place the author of this article on one of those ships that Brant had described in vivid terms in his many chapters. Perhaps he would point us to his nineteenth chapter entitled “Von vil schwetzen”:

Der ist eyn narr der anden wil
Dar zo sunst yederman swigt still
Vnd wil on not verdienen hasz
So er mit ere mocht schwigen basz
Wer reden wil, so er nit sol
Der fogt in narren orden wol.

(19, 1-6)

It remains to be seen, however, in which of his ships this short analysis might fall, or whether all the ships have to take off by themselves without the author of the following interpretation.¹²

I suggest to use the Narrenschiff in the same way as a social historian would look at a late-medieval document, although this might, at first sight, appear as overstating Brant's observations. A similar approach has been pursued to some extent by Gudrun Aker in her Narrenschiff: Literatur und Kultur in Deutschland an der Wende zur Neuzeit (1990); in it she utilizes Brant's opus as a basis for sketching a picture of German cultural life around 1500 (167-279).¹³ She limits her examination, however, as broad as it might be conceived, to the historical-cultural level, and does not explore underlying premises of Brant's work (Mentalitätsgeschichte).¹⁴ Aker's focus is not the literary text, hence also not the reflections of the perceived “reality” in the literary discourse. Instead she writes a social history using Brant's Narrenschiff as one of many other sources, though these are not quoted and are simply assumed as the background for her descriptions of the intellectual and economic conditions of late-medieval life.¹⁵ Here I intend to extend this mode of investigation into the areas of mental history, Alltagsgeschichte, and social, economic, and political conditions as reflected in the literary discourse.¹⁶

On the one hand, it is, of course, a difficult, certainly not advisable enterprise to go through a literary text of the kind which Brant conceived and to take the information at face value. On the other, scholarship has not been very successful in reaching an opinio communis regarding the proper interpretation of the Narrenschiff, probably because of the multiplicity of thematic aspects, values, ideals, and narrative concepts built into the text.¹⁷

Therefore, conceptually, the following paper is indebted to Edelgard DuBruck's study on Aspects of Fifteenth-Century Society in the German Carnival Comedies (1993), where the shrovetide plays are used as “a mirror of fifteenth-century man, especially of the common man” (ix-x).¹⁸ There are certain pitfalls in such an approach, because the notion of what we mean by reality or realism does not easily gain a solid basis when we simply read the texts and their statements about reality.¹⁹ Nevertheless, DuBruck has a point when she stresses: “these literary sources not only coexisted with the courtly and devotional material, but were often intricately interwoven with either or both” (xi-xii). It will remain difficult to distinguish between, on the one hand, perceptions, projections, and concrete targets of criticism in shrovetide plays, and, on the other, factual elements directly derived from real living conditions at the late fifteenth century. Possibly one could agree with DuBruck that late-medieval men began “increasingly to reflect about their own selves and their place in history, about different age groups, old age in particular” (124). From this perspective we might gain significant insights into actual economic, political, and moral conditions in Southwest Germany, at least from the perspective of a leading writer and thinker from that time.

We will have to be much more careful in dealing with Sebastian Brant's Narrenschiff, though, in comparison with the traditional shrovetide plays. Brant was a highly learned man, fully aware of medieval and early modern satires, and knew how to weave a multiplicity of narrative threads into his verse treatise on people's foolishness. The Narrenschiff combines, as Barbara Könneker has demonstrated, the tradition of medieval moral treatises—even though satirically undergirded—with the classical Roman satire. The novelty of his work consists, however, in the extent to which he transformed his entire society into a chaotic world in which seemingly normal people live and act as fools.²⁰ According to Könneker's interpretation, it was not the satirical form of the Narrenschiff which made it so popular in the following century, but instead the content, which was a direct reflection of the audience's world, their concerns, and their perceptions of reality (68).

As Brant scholarship has repeatedly confirmed, the text quickly proved to be a powerful mirror for its readers, and an important source of spiritual instruction.²¹ In Friedrich Gaede's words: “Das Narrenschiff ist der Platz aller, die die objektiven Bindungen abgestreift haben und ihren subjektiven Interessen folgen … Brant[s] These, daß jedermann Narr ist, begründet seinen Anspruch, ein totales Bild der Welt zu geben.”²² This observation is certainly true, but despite this and other assertions, little efforts have been made to detail specifically and in concreto what Brant actually depicted, how he read his world and translated it into his literary images, and to what extent he cast his environment in the fool's garb in order to include everybody in his satirical treatise.

Even severe, i.e., radical and perhaps exaggerated criticism of the world, the people, bad morality, stupidity, and ignorance might turn out to be important material for the social historian. A negative voice tells us as much, if not more, about social conditions, intellectual perceptions, ideals and values of a certain time than a chronicle or a moral treatise. Consequently, I will exemplify the richness of Brant's Narrenschiff as an important document for social and mental history. Of course, we will hear only Brant's voice, but it will be a representative voice which was obviously able to influence wide circles of readers—see the popularity of the Narrenschiff far into the next centuries.²³ In addition, the narrator responds to a host of other voices outside of his text (heteroglossia),²⁴ either refuting or agreeing with them. This easily identifiable dialogic communication confirms the value of the text in terms of social history, Alltagsgeschichte, and mental history.²⁵

In chapter 33, for instance, Brant discusses adultery and complains about the little concern people feel regarding this “crime.” Whereas in earlier times adultery was harshly punished, he explains, now marriages are in such a bad shape that nobody cares to impose the old laws. Instead, dangerous forms of violence characterize the relationship of husbands and wives: “Vnd kratz du mich, so kratz ich dich” (8). Brant includes many biblical examples of how adulterers were treated in the old days, whereas today, as he points out, “Wenig sint den gat yetz zue hertz” (19). Adultery occurs even with the full knowledge of the marriage partners, and the evil wives lose all shame and fear resulting from their acts: “das sie keyn scham noch ere me acht” (51). On the other hand, the husbands turn into bad liars, yet continue to go to church (56). The prettier a woman is, the more she is subject to adultery and lying: “All welt ist falsch vnd vntruw vol” (64).

Strangely enough, Brant always alludes to classical examples and teachers, as if he were not certain how to defend his moral views and needed legitimization and classical authorities. Nevertheless, it is the entire world which the narrator intends to blame because it is “voll beschyssz vnd lyst” (78), which could mean that the extent to which women and men cheated on each other had reached such proportions that the satirist loses his patience and bitterly complains about the bad situation without making even an attempt at joking about it. It deserves mention that modern social historians such as James A. Brundage now confirm Brant's observations and criticism in their examination of contemporary sources. The plethora of available documents, both from the courts and the Church, condemning moral misbehavior, indicates both an increase in conflicts and the loosening of public ethics in the late Middle Ages, and the renewed interest on the part of the city administrators to impose new laws and to enforce them for the sake of social and moral peace in their municipalities.²⁶

As a didactic poet, Brant is not much off the mark in his comments, it seems, particularly when he combines traditional proverbial knowledge with current social criticism. In chapter 49 Brant discusses the problem with parents who provide bad examples for their children. Those adults, who talk within ear's distance to children and virgins about love affairs and criminal acts, should not be surprised to find out that these youngsters will later remember those very words and turn to a life of crime as well. Maybe Brant was filled with senile frustration, but he was certainly justified in expressing his opinion that both abbots as representatives of the clergy and parents—i.e., groups of people with considerable educational functions—go the wrong way about their pedagogical principles: “Die vätter sint schuldig dar an” (49, 13). The reason, however, why morals are in such a decline, is also explained, here with a reference to social habits:

Was man vor kynden red vnd tug
Dann gwonheyt, andere natur ist,
Die macht, das kynden vil gebrist
Eyn yedes leb recht, inn sym huss
Das aergernisz nit kumm dar vsz.

(30-34)

A pedagogue is speaking here, but obviously not with a theory in mind, but rather with much practical experience as the basis for his criticism.

On another level of his argument, Brant also includes very concrete images of daily life to make his analogies possible, such as of oxen and sheep brought to the butcher. These animals represent those who run to prostitutes to satisfy their sexual lust: “glich wie zom schynder got der ochsz” (50, 10). In another context, Brant refers to the flaying of donkeys with the purpose of attacking those young men who marry old women for their money (52, 24). Moreover, he discusses the foolishness of trading a ram for a goat (61, 30), which indicates how much a learned scholar like him was fully aware of the peasant work necessary for the survival of people who were far removed from the realities of agriculture. Animals were a normal part of urban life far into the modern age, for which reason the narrator reflects on them as appropriate images for people's wrong behavior.²⁷

A fascinating aspect proves to be the topic of chapter 63: begging and the beggars' strategies to abuse people's sympathy and pity. Brant turns out to be a harsh social critic here, who attacks the practice of using methods of begging to gain riches. The pervasive lament by priests, monks, and their orders that poverty is threatening them is the narrator's first target: they pretend to be poor, but they simply hide their wealth to gain even more through people's pity for the poor. Begging here appears as a skillful strategy to fool those willing to give alms, and the beggars have turned into professionals who learned their trade from their parents: “Vnd leren wol das baettel gschrey” (63, 29). Beggars seldom have to fast; instead they enjoy their gains and spend them on “buebenwergk” (38) and “rottwelsch” (39). To be a beggar requires considerable skill, Brant continues, because those dedicated to this work must prepare their bodies like actors to appear miserable enough to evoke pity, and pity again opens the purse:

Diser kan fallen vor den lüten
Das yederman tog vff jn düten
Der lehnet andern jr kynder ab
Das er eyn grossen huffen hab.

(67-70)

The physical handicap is emphasized through tricks such as the following:

Der gat hyncken, der gat bucken
Der byndet eyn beyn vff eyn krucken
Oder eyn gerner beyn jn die schlucken
Wann man jm recht luegt zo der wunde
So sach man, wie er wer gebunden.

(73-77)

Whether Brant was conservative in his criticism or not, his satire is certainly aimed at the social conditions of his time: he observed large-scale begging and formed his opinion about these poor people. In a way it sounds like modern conservative criticism when he emphasizes: “Vil neren vsz dem baettel sich / Die me gelts hant, dann du vnd ich” (93-94).²⁸ The point is not, however, whether we have to approve or condemn his criticism; instead, what matters are Brant's sharp observations and reflections of urban realities.²⁹ Even if his criticism might be shaded by his personal perceptions and social position, the following statement has to be taken very seriously:

Mancher verloszt vff baettlen sich
der Spielt, buebt, halt sich üppeklich
Dann so er schon verschlembt syn hab
Schleht man jm baettlen doch nit ab.

(88-91)

Irrespective of his characteristic satire and more or less subtle irony, Brant succeeds in opening an important window that reveals a perspective toward the social and economic conditions of his time, probably in the cities above all. There are excessive forms of begging which are no longer aimed at solving particular economic hardship but simply serve as a convenient and effective means of acquiring wealth.³⁰

In his chapter on evil women (ch. 64) the opposite tendency comes through insofar as here the misogynist tradition gains the upper hand, although the narrator makes an initial attempt to distinguish between good and evil women and aims his criticism only at the latter.³¹ As is to be expected, biblical names such as Abygayl, Dauid, Ochosyas, Salmon, and Pyeris (Paris) represent the simplistic message that women are Eve's daughters and most of them turn out to be as bad as the Ur-mother: “Keyn bitterer krut vff erd man fyndt / Dann forwn der hertz ist eyn garn / Vnd strick, dar jn vil doren farn” (52-54).³²

Brant distances himself clearly from astrology and accuses those who believe in the power of the stars of being bad Christians (65, 29-30). But his criticism implies for us that the art of astrology was widespread and held its sway over many of his contemporaries. Whereas Johann von Tepl had Death ridicule all occult sciences as his last defense against the ploughman's argument, which gave these sciences new credit, and while the anonymous author of the chapbook Doktor Faustus demonstrates, against his own intentions, the power man can gain through these sciences, Brant simply lists the various forms of superstitions and emphasizes that people like to be deceived by practitioners of these arts: “Die weltt die will betrogen syn” (65, 68). His sober analysis indicates his amused rebuttal but also tells us that astrology, among other arts, was widely accepted and exerted a considerable influence on people at the end of the Middle Ages.³³ These kinds of pre-scientific beliefs did not lose their influence even at the universities until the later sixteenth century, and at Brant's time the occult sciences enjoyed considerable popularity, as the Narrenschiff explicitly demonstrates through the author's harsh criticism.³⁴

Most fruitful for our discussion of the cultural context seems to be Brant's chapter 66: “Von erfarung aller land,” because here we are put into a position to examine how people in Europe reacted to the new discovery of America by Columbus in 1492. We know that the New World quickly became an important topic in travel literature, either in the form of broadsheets or of travelogues, autobiographical accounts, or letters.³⁵ Brant, on the other hand, picked this topic, as we may assume from the entire thrust of his satirical text, because he felt little respect for the exploration of the external world, when the internal world, the human soul, really was at stake. The first three lines of this chapter set the tone:

Ich halt den ouch nit jtel wisz
Der all syn synn leidt, und syn flisz
Wie er erkund all stett, vnd landt.

Obviously, Brant warned against trusting the new mathematical and pragmatic exploration of the world. The measurement of distances and physical dimensions of countries would not, as we later hear, allow the curious person to understand his or her own soul: “Vnd kan sich selb vsz raechen nitt” (66). There is no value in finding out all kinds of information about the world in its physical appearance when the hour of one's death remains unknown: “Wann er erfart schon hohe ding / Vnd nit die zyt syns todes kennt” (114-15). For Brant there is no use in learning much about the outer reality when there is not first an understanding of the internal world: “Vnd kan doch nit erkennen sich” (122).

Instead of searching for honor and secular glory, he recommends thinking of the eternal afterlife. From worldly joy and happiness result disaster and misery (130). More critical even, Brant accuses those who are interested in exploring the physical world, in traveling, and in meeting new people and cultures of actually becoming amiss in their service to God: “Dann wem syn synn zue wandeln stot / Der mag nit gentzlich dienen got” (153-54).³⁶

If we turn the argument around and examine it for any potential information about the mental history of Brant's life, we discover the following: the critic tackles travelers because he believes that the novelty of the foreign worlds will detract them from the true goal in life, that is, to develop the soul and to prepare it for the afterlife. This means, in his life, Brant encountered an increasing number of people interested in doing just the opposite from what he recommended: geographers began to measure the known world and created maps (3-18); questions were raised why the water was not falling off the plate constituting the earth (10), although at Brant's time it was well known in learned circles that our planet has the shape of a ball.³⁷ New countries had been discovered, such as Iceland, Lapland, and even America, although Brant does not mention the new continent by its actual name: “Golt, jnslen funden, vnd nacket lüt / Von den man vor wust sagen nüt” (55-56).

Brant's criticism of the many attempts to figure out by rational means what the world looks like and what its dimensions are suggests that such questions were indeed often raised and occupied people's minds: “Dar jnn menschlich vernunfft jrrt ser / Das sy solchem noch raechen allzyt” (64-65). Even the author's advice to think more about how to safeguard the soul from worldly temptations than to consider material aspects reveals the extent to which the contemporaries had turned their backs on the Church and its ever continuing spiritual appeals.

Curiositas was the key to learning and discovery, but Brant argued against it in harsh terms.³⁸ The more his statements turned bitter, the more we may argue that he actually reflected concrete conditions of his time. Indeed, Columbus did not leave only a slight impact on his contemporaries; rather, the opposite was the case, even in Germany, and Brant railed against radical changes which the discovery had provoked within his society and among his fellow citizens.

Other aspects of Brant's satire are the overuse of the judicial courts, never-ending bickering and suing among friends and neighbors (ch. 71), the strong deterioration of civic manners (Grobianismus) as outlined in chapter 72, the increased preference of hunting in the forests (ch. 74), bragging (ch. 76), gambling (ch. 77), adultery, warfare, overlending of money (ch. 78), and even the pretentiousness of peasants who dress up and behave in a manner far beyond their social class (ch. 82). Social upheaval follows the fact, as Brant sees it, that now peasants have acquired more wealth than burghers and strive for a new status; similarly, the rich burghers want to leave their social class and imitate the nobles. The counts desire to climb up the social ladder, too, and aspire to become dukes, and the dukes aim for the royal crown. People carry swords in the name of chivalry but do not understand the ethical meaning of this rank: “Vil werden ritter, die keyn schwert / Doent bruchen für gerechtikeyt” (37-38).³⁹ Money, however, and especially usury, emerge in the long run as the main sources for all of these evils, since both allow the lower classes to push aside the upper ranks. The narrator explicitly states that “Der Adel hat keyn vorteyl me” (47), because the feudal order is in disarray, the medieval world is coming to an end: “Keynem benoegt me, mit sym stand” (61).⁴⁰ Immediately following, a new chapter deals with the impact of money on morality and ethics, obviously because the financial power of the previously subordinated classes undermines the traditional social structure. Brant's satirical criticism reveals more than it ever could have hoped to achieve in taking society back to a conservative ideal. The changes, as they are outlined here, are so dramatic that the narrator has nothing left but his sarcasm and bitter comments, and thus confirms in very explicit terms the observations by social and economic historians regarding the paradigm shift which occurred at the end of the fifteenth century. Usury, in particular, is the object of Brant's most vehement criticism because it amounts to a crime against the weakest members of society. Whereas wine then cost ten pounds for a specific quantity, a few months later the price had risen to thirty (ch. 93, 11-13). As is to be expected, Brant accuses the Jews, above all, for their practice of usury, and openly favors pogroms to expel all Hebrews, while he is fully aware that others deal in money as well: “Wer rich will syn, mit chad der gmeyn / Der ist eyn narr, doch nit alleyn” (33-34).

As impressive as Brant's final comments are in his 112th chapter, little do they mean in terms of political and ethical reform. The author appeals to his readers to listen neither to the aristocrats nor to the peasants; instead, one ought to pay attention only to one's own reason and to weigh all options before one reaches a conclusion. Ideal persons constantly evaluate their actions, words, and deeds, and always strive to do the good and to fight the evil (112, 48). The ultimate goal, the counterpoint of the entire Narrenschiff, turns out to be “wiszheit” or wisdom (54), yet it appears to be a rare quality and hard to accomplish.

Brant's criticism leads us, if examined e negativo, from the high point of his intellectual, religious, and ethical idealism to the social, financial, mental, and cultural realities of his time. We cannot say with certainty to what extent the author was right in his assessment of the social conditions of his time. We know, however, that the Narrenschiff was an immediate reflection of or even a response to these conditions. Particularly the intellectual elites agreed with Brant's viewpoints, as we can tell from the enormous popularity which the satirical text enjoyed, leading to adaptations and rewritings, the most famous being the Morias enkomion seu laus stultitiae by Erasmus of Rotterdam (1511). The Narrenschiff apparently gave expression to profound disgruntlement with and criticism of life at the end of the fifteenth century. With the help of the fool figure, the audiences were allowed to laugh at themselves, and could also reflect upon their own moral and ethical shortcomings. As a didactic treatise, we might say, Brant's narrative became a powerful tool in the hands of the intellectuals, although it is very doubtful that this had any impact on the actual social, economic, and political conditions of that time. For us, on the other hand, the Narrenschiff reveals an enormous wealth of concrete data on the social and economic realities of the late fifteenth century. Brant's rallying cry was well received among his audience, probably because they agreed with his criticism of and objections to the general upheaval during their time. The same cry, however, did not effect anything else than to turn the Narrenschiff into a popular literary treatise of high intellectual esteem. Nevertheless, our analysis has demonstrated that a literary text such as this one proffers a treasure of information about the mental history, everyday life, and people's attitudes about the general transformations which affected the class structure, late-medieval economy, and, above all, ethics and morality.

Notes

1. See: Joachim Knape, Dieter Wuttke, Sebastian-Brant-Bibliographie: Forschungsliteratur von 1800 bis 1985 (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1990).

2. See: Knape, “Sebastian Brant als Lieddichter,” Lied im deutschen Mittelalter. Überlieferung, Typen, Gebrauch. Chiemsee-Colloquium 1991. Eds. Cyril Edwards, Ernst Hellgardt and Norbert H. Ott (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1996), 309-33.

3. Much literary criticism has focused on the formal aspects of this work; see Beat Mischler, Gliederung und Produktion des “Narrenschiffes” (1494) von Sebastian Brant. Studien zur Germanistik, Anglistik und Komparatistik, 103 (Bonn: Bouvier Verlag Herbert Grundmann, 1981); other work on the history of adaptations, such as Fr. Aurelius Pompen, The English Versions of the Ship of Fools. A Contribution to the History of the Early French Renaissance in England (New York: Octagon Books, 1967; rpt. of the 1925 ed.); and on the interrelationship between form and content, such as Georg Baschnagel, “Narrenschiff” und “Lob der Torheit.” Zusammenhänge und Beziehungen. Europäische Hochschulschriften. Reihe I. Deutsche Literatur und Germanistik, 283 (Frankfurt a. M.-Bern-Las Vegas: Lang, 1979).

4. See Michael Giesecke, Der Buchdruck in der frühen Neuzeit. Eine historische Fallstudie über die Durchsetzung neuer Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1990).

5. See Franz Josef Worstbrock, “Sebastian Brant,” Deutsche Dichter. 8 Bände. Band 2; Reformation, Renaissance und Barock (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1988), 9-20, here 14.

6. See my analysis “The Heathen World in the Volksbuch Wilhelm von Österreich. An Anthropological Revision of the Crusade Epics,” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen XCIII, 2 (1992): 145-61.

7. For instance, Ermordung von Priestern und Doktoren durch Groß Türck (Augsburg: Melchior Ramminger, 1539); Auszug etlicher Zeitungen, von der Türcken Kriegshandlung in Ungarn (Nuremberg: Valentin Geyszler, 1566); Auszug eines Brieffs wie einer so in der Türckey wonhafft seynem freündt in dise lande geschriben vnd angezeygt was das Türkisch Regiment vnd wesen sey (Nuremberg: J. Gutknecht, 1526). See Carl Göllner, Turcica. Vol. 1/II. Die europäischen Türkendrucke des 16. Jahrhunderts. Bibliotheca Bibliographica Aureliana, 23 (Baden-Baden: Koerner, 1968).

8. Edwin H. Zeydel, Sebastian Brant. TWAS 13 (New York: Twayne, 1967); Klaus Manger, Das “Narrenschiff”: Entstehung, Wirkung und Deutung (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1983).

9. Edwin H. Zeydel, The Ship of Fools by Sebastian Brant. Translated into Rhyming Couplets with Introduction and Commentary by E. H. Z. (New York: Dover, 1962), 3.

10. See: Knape, “Sebastian Brant,” Deutsche Dichter der frühen Neuzeit (1450-1600). Ihr Leben und Werk. Herausgegeben von Stephan Füssel (Berlin: Schmidt, 1993), 156-72.

11. Hans Rupprich, Die deutsche Literatur vom späten Mittelalter bis zum Barock. Erster Teil: Das ausgehende Mittelalter, Humanismus und Renaissance 1370-1520. Geschichte der deutschen Literatur von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart, 4/1 (Munich: Beck, 1970), 585.

12. Here quoted from Sebastian Brants Narrenschiff. Hg. von Friedrich Zarncke (Rpt. of the Leipzig 1854 ed. Hildesheim: Olms, 1961).

13. Stuttgarter Arbeiten zur Germanistik, 216 (Stuttgart: H.-D. Heinz, 1990).

14. See: Europäische Mentalitätsgeschichte. Hauptthemen in Einzeldarstellungen, ed. Peter Dinzelbacher. Kröners Taschenausgabe, 469 (Stuttgart: Kröner, 1993); Hans-Henning Kortüm, Mensch und Mentalitäten. Einführung in Vorstellungswelten des Mittelalters (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1996).

15. Aker discusses, for instance, “Das Bild einer Stadt” (169-77), “Bürger, Einwohner und ‘unehrliche Leute’” (178-205), “Verordnete Vernunft” (206-18), customs, morality, shame (219-44), love and eroticism (245-50), and so forth; for a social history with a much stronger historical bent, see George Huppert, After the Black Death. A Social History of Early Modern Europe. Interdisciplinary Studies in History. Sec. ed. (Bloomington-Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1998).

16. For a model of how social historians have approached Alltagsgeschicte, see, for example, the contributions to Medium Aevum Quotidianum 30 (1994); see also Peter Dinzelbacher, Angst im Mittelalter. Teufels-, Todes- und Gotteserfahrung: Mentalitätsgeschichte und Ikonographie (Paderborn-Munich-Vienna-Zurich: Schöningh, 1996).

17. John Van Cleve, Sebastian Brant's The Ship of Fools in Critical Perspective, 1800-1991. Studies in German Literature, Linguistics, and Culture (Columbia, S.C.: Camden House, 1993); this skinny and almost skimpy “Forschungsbericht” lists the plethora of voices, but never fully succeeds in presenting the whole picture of the individual opinions.

18. Edelgard E. DuBruck, Aspects of Fifteenth-Century Society in the German Carnival Comedies. Speculum Hominis. Studies in Russian and German, 8 (Lewiston-Queenston-Lampeter: Edwin Mellen, 1993); see also Bertrand Michael Buchmann, Daz jemant singet oder sait … Das volkstümliche Lied als Quelle zur Mentalitätengeschichte des Mittelalters (Frankfurt a. Main-Berlin-et al.: Lang, 1995), where, however, the problematics of this methodological approach are by far bigger and seriously detract from the intended results of Buchmann's study.

19. See my review of DuBruck's monograph in Fifteenth-Century Studies 21 (1994), 354-56.

20. Barbara Könneker, Satire im 16. Jahrhundert. Epoche—Werke—Wirkung. Arbeitsbücher zur Literaturgeschichte (Munich: Beck, 1991), 57.

21. Georg Baschnagel, “Narrenschiff” und “Lob der Torheit” (see above, n. 4), 18-22, 75-92.

22. Friedrich Gaede, “Renaissance und Reformation,” Geschichte der deutschen Literatur. Kontinuität und Veränderung. Vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart. In 3 Bänden. Band 1: Vom Mittelalter bis zum Barock. Ed. Ehrhard Bahr (Tübingen: Francke, 1987), 245-310, here 294-95.

23. Jan-Dirk Müller, “Poet, Prophet, Politiker: Sebastian Brant als Publizist und die Rolle der laikalen Intelligenz um 1500,” Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik 10, H. 37 (1980), 102-27.

24. Paul J. Thibault, “Semantic Variation, Social Heteroglossia, Intertextuality: Thematic and Axiological Meaning in Spoken Discourse,” Critical Studies 1/2 (1989), 181-209.

25. Alltag im Spätmittelalter. Ed. Harry Kühnel with contributions by Helmut Hundsbichler, Gerhard Jaritz, Harry Kühnel, Elisabeth Vavra. 3rd ed. (Graz-Vienna-Cologne: Edition Kaleidoskop, 1986); also: Daily Life in the Late Middle Ages. Ed. Richard Britnell (Thrupp-Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing, 1998).

26. See: James A. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago-London: The University of Chicago Press, 1987), 487-550.

27. Otto Borst, Alltagsleben im Mittelalter. insel taschenbuch 513 (Frankfurt a.M.: Insel, 1983), 184-232, especially 214-16.

28. Ernst Schubert, Fahrendes Volk im Mittelalter (Bielefeld: Verlag für Regionalgeschichte, 1995), 365-71.

29. Joachim Knape, Dichtung, Recht und Freiheit. Studien zu Leben und Werk Sebastian Brants 1457-1521. Saecvla Spiritualia, 23 (Baden-Baden: Koerner, 1992).

30. Michel Mollat, Die Armen im Mittelalter. Translated from the French by Ursula Irsigler. Second edition (Munich: Beck, 1984), 190-99. Mollat speaks of the poverty of the masses and their need to rely on begging as their only means of securing a living.

31. Woman Defamed and Woman Defended. An Anthology of Medieval Texts. Ed. Alcuin Blamires with Karen Pratt and C. W. Marx (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992); in the late Middle Ages a European querelle des femmes occupied many minds; see Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil, Jr., “Editors' Introduction to the Series” for Henricus Cornelius Agrippa, Declamation on the Nobility and Preeminence of the Female Sex. Trans and ed., with an Introduction by Rabil (Chicago-London: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), ix-xxviii. Also: Die europäische Querelle des Femmes. Geschlechterdebatten seit dem 15. Jahrhundert. Querelles. Jahrbuch für Frauenforschung 1997, vol. 2, eds. Gisela Bock and Margarete Zimmermann (Stuttgart-Weimar: Metzler, 1997).

32. The names are here spelled in accordance with Brant's text.

33. Lynn Thorndike, History of Magic and Experimental Sciences During the First Thirteenth Centuries of our Era (New York: Columbia University Press, 1923-58); James M. Ogier, “Oswald and Astrology,” Medieval German Literature. Proceedings from the 23rd International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Michigan, May 5-8, 1988, ed. by A. Classen. GAG 507 (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1989), 181-95.

34. Otto Mazal, Die Sternenwelt des Mittelalters (Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 1993), with a rich collection of illustrations and their commentary.

35. See Wolfgang Neuber, Fremde Welt im europäischen Horizont. Zur Topik der deutschen Amerika-Reiseberichte der Frühen Neuzeit. Philologische Studien und Quellen, 121 (Berlin: Schmidt, 1991); see also my article “The Perception of America in Early Modern German Literature: From Sebastian Brant to Lohenstein,” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 95. 3 (1994), 337-52.

36. Barbara Könneker, Wesen und Wandlung der Narrenidee im Zeitalter des Humanismus: Brant—Murner—Erasmus (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1966), 95.

37. Rudolf Simek, Erde und Kosmos im Mittelalter. Das Weltbild vor Kolumbus (München: Beck, 1992), 39-47; although the view of the world as a round ball was not the dominant one, it found a number of influential defenders who eventually forced the monumental paradigm shift of early modern science to happen.

38. Hans Blumenberg, Die Legitimität der Neuzeit (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1966); id., Der Prozeß der theoretischen Neugierde (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1973); Jan-Dirk Müller, “Curiositas und erfarung der Welt im frühen deutschen Prosaroman,” Literatur und Laienbildung im Spätmittelalter und in der Reformationszeit. Symposion Wolfenbüttel 1981. Hg. Ludger Grenzmann und Karl Stackmann (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1984), 252-71.

39. Maria Dobozy, “Sumptuary Laws and the Reception of the Münchener Oswald in the City,” Medieval German Literature, ed. Albrecht Classen, 197-210; Ulrike Lehmann-Langholz, Kleiderkritik in mittelalterlicher Dichtung. Europäische Hochschulschriften. Reihe I. Deutsche Sprache und Literatur, 885 (Frankfurt a.M.-Bern-New York: Lang, 1985), 266-81.

40. Ernst Schubert, Einführung in die Grundprobleme der deutschen Geschichte im Spätmittelalter. Grundprobleme der deutschen Geschichte (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1992), 163-77; John Van Cleve, The Problem of Wealth in the Literature of Luther's Germany. Studies in German Literature, Linguistics, and Culture, 55 (Columbia, S.C.: Camden House, 1991), Chapter 2.