« Quam satyram vocitare queo » Satire between the serious and the comic in the Ships of Fools

This article proposes a study of the satirical mode by comparing the German original, the influential Latin version by Brant’s disciple, Jakob Locher, and the first French prose adaptations. Whereas popular comedy and a certain destructive pessimism seem to dominate Brant’s satire, the subsequent transpositions privilege an approach balancing Horatian gentleness and Juvenalian indignation, with a pronounced focus on the curative forces of the satirical verb and, consequently, their own authorial powers.