How Don Quixote drew on Praise of Folly
A documented line of influence: Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra demonstrably engaged Erasmus’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
Praise of Folly
Erasmus · 1511
RenaissanceThe influenced
Don Quixote
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra · 1605
RenaissanceRelevance
7/10
On Don Quixote’s page
- The Quixote's deepest paradox — a madman who is also the truest soul in the book — is Erasmian: Praise of Folly had already argued that folly is a higher wisdom
- Cervantes inherited the lineage directly; his tutor was an Erasmian, and the pervasive humanist irony of Folly is the air Don Quixote breathes
- Read Folly first and the knight stops looking simply insane and starts looking like a holy fool
On Praise of Folly’s page
- Erasmus's central joke — that folly sees truer than sense, that the fool is the wise one — is the seed of Cervantes's mad knight
- Cervantes came up inside this tradition: his tutor López de Hoyos was an Erasmian, and the humanist irony of Folly runs straight through Don Quixote
- Folly turns wisdom inside out in an essay; Don Quixote does it across a whole life