In Praise of Folly uses humor to present a scathing critique of 16th century society. Erasmus personifies "folly" and notes how well she is respected by people. Folly does not need a whole lot of additional praise because people give her so much respect. Erasmus is at his best when he carries things to their absurdity. (We all must be fools, because we were the offspring of people that were foolish enough to get married.)
The first part is the best. Closer to the end he starts to get more critical of the church and society. However, even in his "serious" sections, some of the dark humor remains.
Praise of Folly is an old book, so it can be found in free project gutenburg and kindle editions as well as librivox audibooks. It was initially written in Latin and the John Wilson translation I listened to was done a couple centuries ago and is not the easiest to follow. At the start, Erasmus makes some puns on Thomas More's name. Then he proceeds to present folly praising herself. The work ends with more of a straightforward list of good things to do with one's life. I wanted to like this book more than I did. I just had trouble working through it. It is interesting that in the early renaissance period, works were written in Latin so that they would have a large audience. though today, those are all in a "dead" language, while if they were written in the the then-provincial language of English they would continue in a modern literary tradition.
