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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
A 5 page essay that contrasts Erasmus' The Praise of Folly and Bartolome de Las Casas' defense of Native Americans, A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies. Erasmus detailed the urgent need for reform in the Catholic Church, and Las Casas castigated his Spanish government for its treatment of indigenous populations in the New World. No additional sources cited.
Page Count:
5 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_khelc.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
in the Catholic Church, and Las Casas castigated his Spanish government for its treatment of indigenous populations in the New World. Erasmus has been credited with sparking revolutionary change, while
Las Casas work was relatively ineffective, in contrast. While this may be true, it is also true that both works are basically conservative in their approach, i.e., neither work proposes
the overthrow of the established order, but rather endorses its legitimacy. So, why then should one become so much more influential to change then the other? As the following discussion
will demonstrate, the answer to this question has to do with the topic addressed by each of these authors, and the social climate of their respective audiences. As Clarence
H. Miller points out in his introduction to his translation of Erasmus The Praise of Folly, this work condenses the "humanists program for educational, religious, and theological reform" (xi). Furthermore,
Miller observes that Folly was conceived and written on the great "watershed" of European history between the urbanity of the Italian Renaissance and the "earnestness of the Northern Humanism" (x).
In other words, the European social climate was ripe for revolutionary change. In Folly, Erasmus writes with the voice of "Folly," herself, personifying that part of human behavior; however,
this text is not primarily a satire, as such, but rather a complex analysis of European society at that time. The first portion of the book is rather light-hearted in
tone as it concerns the illusions that allow society to function. However, midway through the tone changes as Erasmus begins his criticism of those in authority, both secular and
religious. In this section, he addresses the foibles, pretensions, and abuses of theologian and monk, cardinal and pontiff, king and courtier, with no one escaping his scathing observations. He
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