Humorous arguments for the benefits and the ubiquity of folly have been chosen as Michaelmas Term's Featured Book. 

Each term a member of the Library staff selects a text from Gonville & Caius College Library’s historic collections. Assistant Librarian (Bibliographic Services) Neil Kirkham has chosen two - Antonio Maria Spelta’s twin books, published in Italian in 1607 and here translated as La sage folie (Wise folly) and La delectable folie (Delightful folly).

Neil says: "I came across La sage folie by chance in our ongoing project to catalogue the rare books in the College’s Lower Library, where works of humour aren't common. Librarians don't usually get to read books, just to examine them – but the theme of a ‘wise folly’ immediately made me wonder what its connection was to Erasmus's famous Praise of Folly, and to much later arguments in French philosophy (which I try to follow as a general reader) about reason and madness.

"Early modern French is a challenge for me at best, but the translator here was happy to let a sentence run for nine pages. By an unlikely chance, though, there was another, clearer French version published in the same year of 1628, so I’d sometimes turn to a facsimile of that text to translate our translation."

Read Neil's Featured book for Michaelmas Term 2025: Recurring folly | Gonville & Caius

For all our Featured books: Featured books | Gonville & Caius