Folly Goes French

The early-modern French translations of Erasmus’ Praise of Folly show an astonishing adaptability to its ever changing readerships. Much attention has been paid recently to the two sixteenth-century translations (1518 and 1520) and their intended readers—royal and bourgeois respectively. The three French translations of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are less known but all the more intriguing. In 1642 Folly addresses herself to the French pre-classicist readers, adepts of Richelieu’s new Académie Française—although her translator, Hélie Poirier, was a Protestant refugee, recently settled in the Netherlands. In 1671 Folly seeks her readers in the Parisian salons, satirizing the same societal wrongs as her great contemporary Molière in Tartuffe and Les femmes savantes. The successful translation by Nicolas Gueudeville (22 editions from 1713 onward) is also a chameleon: originally translated and printed in Leiden, the text gradually becomes more Parisian with each passing edition. Folly’s language is bowdlerized according to the principles of bienséance, and Vianen’s illustrations, based on Holbein, are discarded as rude and old-fashioned. In 1751 they are replaced by Charles Eisen’s elegant, long-limbed, periwigged figures, dressed to the latest fashion. Although she changes her name (Moria/Stultitia—Dame Sottise—Dame Folie), her language (from humanist Latin to Parisian French), her appearance and attire (from Holbein to Eisen), Folly remains much the same through the ages—everlasting and omnipresent, just as the vices she laughs at.