‘Morals and Letters’

This chapter examines Badius’s conception of the pedagogical function of literature, and sets it in the context of late medieval and humanist debates about poetry, education and ethics. It considers Badius’s ideas about the links between poetry and moral instruction alongside those of contemporary writers Jacob Wimpfeling and Battista Spagnoli (Mantuan). Badius saw all of his familiar commentary texts as providing moral instruction in some sense. The chapter examines in particular Badius’s prefaces, prologues and commentaries on Roman satire (Horace, Juvenal and Persius) and Roman comedy (Terence); and his two adaptations of the Ship of Fools.