"Erasmus dramatizes a well-established political position: that of the fool who claims license to criticize all and sundry without reprisal, since his madness defines him as not fully a person and therefore not a political being with political desires and ambitions. The Praise of Folly, therefore sketches the possibility of a position for the critic of the scene of political rivalry, a position not simply impartial between the rivals but also, by self-definition, off the stage of rivalry altogether."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Booker Prize winnersAcademics from South AfricaNovelists from South AfricaEssayists from South AfricaLinguists from South Africa
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
“Erasmus’s Praise of Folly: Rivalry and Madness,” Neophilologus 76 (1992), p. 1
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/J._M._Coetzee
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
J. M. Coetzee
183 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by J. M. Coetzee →
Related Quotes
"Confessions, apologies: why this thirst for abasement? A hush falls. They circle around him like hunters who have cor…"
"This is the place where bodies are their own signs."
"He did not seem to have a belief, or did not seem to have a belief regarding help."
"It would cost little to march them out into the desert . . . to have them dig, with their last strength, a pit large …"
"But why should people with nowhere to go run away from the nice life we've got here?"
"It would be best if this obscure chapter in the history of the world were terminated at once, if these ugly people we…"
"It is the knowledge of how contingent my unease is, how dependent on a baby that wails beneath my window one day and …"
"Truly the world should belong to singers and dancers."
"It is not, then, in the content or substance of folly that its difference from truth lies, but in where it comes from…"
"I will leave behind my terraces and walls," he said. "They will be enough. They will be more than enough.”"