TY - JOUR N2 - This article contains a bilingual, Latin-Polish, edition of a letter written by Erasmus to John Sixtin (Ioannes Sixtinus), a Frisian student he met in England. In it Erasmus describes a dinner party at Oxford to which he was invited as an acclaimed poet. In the presence of John Colet, leader of English humanists, table talk turned into learned conversation. Erasmus’s contribution to the debate was an improvised fable (fabula) about Cain who, in order to become farmer, persuades the angel guarding Paradise to bring him some seeds from the Garden of Eden. His speech, a showpiece of rhetorical artfulness disguising a string of lies and spurious argument, is so effective that the angel decides to steal the seeds and thus betray God’s trust. Seen in the context of contemporary surge of interest in the art of rhetoric, Erasmus’ apocryphal spoof is an eloquent demonstration of the heuristic value of mythopoeia and the irresistible power of rhetoric. L1 - http://journals.pan.pl/Content/108855/PDF/RL%205-18%204-RYCZEK.pdf L2 - http://journals.pan.pl/Content/108855 PY - 2018 IS - No 5 (350) EP - 544 DO - 10.24425/rl.2018.124767 KW - Early Modern European history KW - 16th-century Latin-language writers KW - 16th century humanism KW - rhetoric KW - Biblical mythopoeia KW - Cain KW - Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536) A1 - Ryczek, Wojciech PB - Polska Akademia Nauk Oddział w Krakowie Komisja Historycznoliteracka PB - Uniwersytet Jagielloński Wydział Polonistyki DA - 2019.03.19 T1 - Cain’s rhetorical artfulness: Erasmus’ Biblical spoof SP - 531 UR - http://journals.pan.pl/dlibra/publication/edition/108855 T2 - Ruch Literacki ER -