Analysis of the critical history of The Ship of Fools(1494) over the past 200 years reveals changing perceptions of literature and of society. Until the mid 1960s, scholarship on The Ship of Fools (1494) by Sebastian Brant was characterised by a kind of academic schizophrenia. For decade after decade, one obstinate underlying question failed to elicit a satisfyinganswer: How could a supposedly disorganized, soporific sermon in wooden verse...