Setting off for Narragonia, the land of fools

Introduction to "The Ship of Fools" (1494)

Sebastian Brant’s “Ship of Fools” was a satirical text that denounced the world’s imperfections and vices. Each chapter was accompanied by an illustration featuring fools. This one comes from the third chapter, depicting the ship of fools sailing off to the imaginary land of “Narragonia”.

Narr is German for fool, and so Narragonia translates loosely to “Foolstopia” or “Land of Fools”

Or, as the original text suggests:

"In diesen Spiegel sollen schauen In this mirror should look,
die Menschen alle, Männer, Frauen;" all of mankind, men and women.

The suggestion is that we are all fools, and each of us should look closely in the mirror and examine what we see. Maybe the true “Land of Fools” is where we are living right now.

As the Tom Waits song goes, “We’re all mad here.”

Julian

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