Abstract: The introduction of this dossier of three article attempts to recap briefly the major topics that have been at the center of the recently renewed interest for the corpus of the Ships of Fools, the first Pan-European bestseller of the age of printing, in the context of the cultural and linguistic transfer known as translatio, which it exemplifies. The articles focus specifically on several key notions: translation-imitation, preaching and the larger religious context as well as the satirical mode that dominates the corpus.
