SOURCE: Zeydel, Edwin H. “Sebastian Brant and His Public.” In Germanic Studies in Honor of Edward Henry Sehrt, edited by Frithjof Andersen Raven, Wolfram Karl Legner, and James Cecil King, pp. 251-64. Coral Gables, Fla.: University of Miami Press, 1968.

In the following essay, Zeydel surveys Brant's more important works as a writer and editor before discussing his use of language, both Latin and the vernacular German he used to reach a wider audience.

We may assume that Sebastian Brant's oldest writings, dating from his early student days in Basel during the late fourteen seventies, consisted of Latin prose and poetry on topics of the day and subjects of interest to a young incipient humanist gradually turning his attention to the study of law. He may even have worked as early as this period as a tyro for some of the Basel publishers. Johann Heynlin a Lapide, who had...