Narragonia Latina. Bilingual Hybrid Edition of the Latin ‚Ships of Fools' by Jakob Locher (1497) and Jodocus Badius (1505) with annotations and commentary

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Thomas Baier; Professor Dr. Joachim Hamm
• Subject Area: German Medieval Studies (Medieval German Literature)
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 465069075

The 'Ship of Fools' is regarded as one of Sebastian Brant's (1457-1521) major works and as a key text of the early modern period. It triggered a broad and varied literary reception, which resulted in numerous new editions, reprints and adaptations throughout Europe until the 17th century. The decisive impetus for its dissemination, however, came from the Latin translation of the text, which was prepared by Brant's pupil Jakob Locher, already a well-known Latin poet at the time, and published in 1497 by Bergmann von Olpe in Basel as 'Stultifera navis'. Brant's book of fools in a kind of Hudibrastic verse had been developed into learned and scholarly humanist poetry. It became a model for French, Dutch, and English adaptations, which were published between 1497 and 1509 in London, Lyon, and Paris, respectively. It has scarcely been noticed that Locher's 'Stultifera navis' was not the only Latin adaptation of Brant's 'Ship of Fools'. A few years later, in 1505, the 'Navis stultifera' of Jodocus Badius was published in Paris. It may have been as influential as Locher's work but is practically forgotten today.For both 'Naves', despite being basic texts of the European reception of the 'Narrenschiff', only a partial edition (Locher) or a monolingual reading text with omission of the paratexts (Bade) is available. This project will therefore produce the first complete critical editions of both Latin 'ships of fools' with a translation (in book form). In addition, a digital commentary will be created, providing an interdisciplinary and comparative commentary on both texts, explaining the relationship to Brant's 'Narrenschiff', linking source texts and digitized material, and creating a virtual library containing, in digital form, the early modern editions that could have been used by Locher and Bade. Besides the usual philological-historical explanations, the commentary focuses on the peculiarities that make the two Latin 'ships of fools' stand out from the literary production of their time. These include, among others: 1) the striking self-commentary of both authors, in Locher's 'Stultifera navis' through (Brant's) marginal notes, in Bade's 'Navis Stultifera' through a commentary at the foot of each chapter, 2) the bimediality of the picture book with its very different relations between woodcut and text as well as the strong paratextuality of the individual chapters, 3) the linguistic transfer from German into Latin and the related questions of style and stylistic mix.The hybrid edition provides several advantages: In book form it allows reliable access to the Latin text and its variants as well as to a modern German translation; in digital form it offers an interdisciplinary online commentary that can be searched according to different interests. Research on European fools’ literature is thus placed on a new footing.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants