BRANT, SEBASTIAN

born 1458?, Strassburg [now Strasbourg, France] died May 10, 1521, Strassburg satirical poet best known for his Das Narrenschiff (1494; The Ship of Fools), the most famous German literary work of the 15th century. Brant studied in Basel, where he was made doctor of laws (1489) and taught in the law faculty. When Basel joined the Swiss Confederation (1499), he returned to Strassburg, where in 1503 he was made city clerk. Maximilian I appointed him imperial councillor and count palatine. Brant's writings are varied: legal; religious; political (in support of Maximilian, against the French and Turks); and, especially, moral (adaptations of the aphorisms of Cato, Faceto, and Freidank). His chief work, however, is Das Narrenschiff (adapted as The Shyp of Folys of the Worlde, by Alexander Barclay, 1509), an allegory telling of a ship laden with fools and steered by fools setting sail for Narragonia, the fool's paradise. The ship allegory is not sustained; instead Brant presents more than 100 fools representing every contemporary shortcoming, serious and trivial. Criminals, drunkards, ill-behaved priests and lecherous monks, spendthrifts, bribe-taking judges, busybodies, and voluptuous women are included in this unsparing, bitter, sweeping satire. Brant's aims are the improvement of his fellows and the regeneration of church and empire. The language is popular, the verse rough but vigorous, and each chapter is accompanied by a woodcut; many of them are ascribed to Albrecht Drer; they are beautifully executed but often only loosely connected with the text. Brant's work, an immediate success, was widely translated and gave rise to a whole school of fool's literature (q.v.). Yet Brant essentially looks backward. He is not a forerunner of the Reformation nor even a true humanist but rather a last embodiment of medieval thought and ideals.