Folly’s Tyranny: Theatricality in Erasmus’s and Labé’s Portraits of Folly

The figure of folly and her tyranny over the human condition are themes that both Erasmus and Louise Labe explore in the sixteenth century, Erasmus in the Praise of Folly and Labe, inspired by Erasmus, in the Debat de Folie et d’Amour. Both works share not only common themes and images, but an emphasis on theatre, both as form and as an important image. Through a comparative analysis of these two works and looking back to Lucian’s Declamatio pro tyrannicida and Erasmus’s response as important sources, it slowly becomes evident that Erasmus and Labe shared a common goal – to highlight the inherent folly of tyranny and to propose models for civic behavior in response to tyranny.