The Nave of insane (work)

The Nef of insane the ( das Narren shyff ) is a German work written by of Strasbourg the Sebastien Brant at the end of the 15th century.

Published by Johann Bergmann d' Olpe, during the carnival with Basle, this versified account counts various types of madness, painting the picture of the human condition, on a satirical tone and moralizer. It mixes the irony and the sermon, rigorism and humor and is at the same time inspired by the spirit of the Réforme and by the popular literature, of hawking, with its dialectal proverbs.

The spirit of work is pessimistic, the author does not believe that the men can amend themselves, but it cannot be prevented from being indignant, to protest. He does not even seek to correct them through he denounces, without wanting to make concession while moderating between the venial sins and those mortals. All also lead to the loss

He knows that the boat goes, simply, towards his shipwreck. This metaphor, main theme of the book, disappear besides well quickly, with the profit of an enumeration, moreover nonfree from repetitions.

The few 7000 worms are short. The portraits (more than one hundred) do not spare anybody, without naming either anybody the too powerful one and of living at the time of the author. The academic references are numerous in this text of well-read man; Brant was doctor “in the two rights” and has thorough concepts of Rhétorique.

A dazing success of edition and a European best-seller

The original edition carried out with Basle date of 1494, but the work, which was an enormous success, frequently is republished, often illustrated engravings on wood. The same year, it was republished with Nuremberg, Augsburg and Reutlingen. Then, in a version “enriched” by an anonymity with Strasbourg. And again with Basle in 1495 and 1499.

A Latin adaptation, Stultifera navis appears in 1497, in Freiburg, then in Paris in 1505 and is republished ten time.

The Grant nave of the folz , in prose and French, appears with Lyon into 1497,1498, then 1530. Two english language versions in worms and prose appear with London, in 1509. Two versions, drawn from the original, are published in 1519 with Rostock and Lübeck in low-German. An edition in Brussels and two more translations in Flemish are found.

The German last editions go back to 1625, then in Flemish in 1635, and work returns then in a durable phase of lapse of memory.

A source of inspiration for the artists

Albrecht Dürer with Basle at the time of the publication would have been one of its more famous illustrators, with a series of engravings, which it would have carried out with three another anonymous artists bâlois, to illustrate each different madness which composes the many chapters of them. Jerome Bosch also drew a famous table from it: '' the Nave of insane the ''.

the Praise of the madness of Érasme appeared in 1509 would have been a refutation, less pessimistic

A Germanic writing founder

It is not for nothing if, at the 19th century, at the time romantic, a new interest for the medieval one and the national roots made re-appear lapse of memory this text. With the first bible of Gutemberg, the Nef of insane the is an important cultural symbol.

Modern edition

the Nave of the insane ones; more dreams of the lord Sebastian Brant , transl. and presentation by Nicole Taubes, Paris, J. Corti, 1997.

Source

Sebastien Brant, the Nave of insane the , Editions the cloud bleue/DNA, the Alsatian library, 1977

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