Beschreibung
Second Latin edition, a counterfeit of the first published earlier in the same year, of Brant's satire mocking the vices of mankind. The Ship of Fools is "the first original work by a German which passed into world literature, and helped to blaze the trail that leads from medieval allegory to modern satire, drama and novel of character" (PMM). Stuchs reprints the text published earlier, on 1 March 1497 by Bergmann de Olpe, but with a different typesetting and woodcuts. The translation from the original German was executed by Brant's student Jakob Locher, in collaboration with his master. The illustrations are taken from Peter Wagner's German edition of 1494. Most of the woodcuts in this copy have been painstakingly "enhanced" in the 19th century: the backgrounds have been blacked-in or filled with fine hatching lines and new details have been added, including checkerboard patterns on pavements and latticework to windows, a few objects tinted in black ink or light grey watercolour, and the word "Antichristus" written in a scroll in the background of the woodcut on leaf p4 verso (which shows the Antichrist above St Peter and his disciples on a boat). The drawing of a dainty fly appears on the outer margin of leaf d3 recto, and the printer's device of Bergman de Olpe has been deftly reproduced at the end of the main text before the index. The result does not resemble the appearance of de Olpe's woodcuts or any other contemporary edition of this work, indicating that this 19th-century intervention was not an attempt to copy, rather to engage with and "improve" the artistic quality of the work. The idea of a pilotless ship filled with irrational humans originates from Plato's Republic. Brant's didactic poem, composed in High German and first published in 1494 as Das Narrenschiff, is the most famous literary treatment of this theme. The ship is bound for Narragonia, a "fool's paradise". More than 100 brief chapters, each dedicated to a particular form of folly (including vices and crimes), are illustrated with a woodcut. The work was a Renaissance best-seller, with 26 different editions being published before 1500, including the first Latin translation by Jacob Locher in 1497 and the first French by Paul Rivière in 1497. "The arrangement of the chapters in the Stultifera navis does not confirm faithfully to that of the original and new material is introduced, more classical allusions are inserted and shifts in emphasis are made. Stultifera navis was key to the wider accessibility of the Narrenschiff in that it was the main source text from which all the translations into European vernacular languages (Dutch, English, Flemish, French) were made" (Andersen, p. 37). Bod-inc B-507; European Americana 497/6; Goff B1087; GW 5055; ISTC ib01087000; Printing and the Mind of Man 37 (first ed.); USTC 743657. Elizabeth Andersen, "Low German and Processes of Cultural Transformation", in Rebecca Braun & Benedict Schofield, eds, Transnational German Studies, 2020. Small octavo (143 x 99 mm): A-S8 T4; 148 leaves, ff. CXLV, [3]. With 117 woodcut illustrations. Modern facsimile of a 15th-century woodcut depicting a fool and portrait of author from the 1587 edition of Nikolaus Reusner's Icones sive imagines virorum literis illustrium tipped in at front at a later date. Early 19th-century black morocco, smooth spine divided by blind fillets and lettered in gilt, blind-stamped border to covers and turn-ins, light blue coated endpapers, edges gilt. Occasional and mostly faded contemporary annotations; old cataloguing slip (describing another book) pasted on front pastedown. Extremities skilfully retouched, inner hinges cracked, but firm skinning to endpapers, paper repairs in margin of a few leaves (loss to side-notes on P4r supplied in manuscript), small worm hole to margin of a few initial and final gatherings (just touching printed text at rear), intermittent light foxing or damp staining. A very good copy.
Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 178647
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