Brant’s Narrenschiff (1494) condemns human folly as a misguided and purely worldly pursuit prevalent among his contemporaries. The poem thus warns against a life dominated by vanity, the desire for fleeting goods, and self-interest, which leads society into the foolish realm of Narragonia. Brant urges his readers to free themselves from folly. Instead, they are encouraged to follow the path to virtue, knowledge, and wisdom, which leads to the so-called stad der wißheyt. For Brant, the exemplary figures, which he places alongside the depictions of fools in the chapters of the Narrenschiff, are crucial to his teaching and transmission of knowledge. With their help, he emphasises the need to use reason, human judgement, virtuous behaviour, and a sense of the common good to maintain or create a stable social order. A central guide to such an order is also provided by the literary spatiality of Brant’s work. It is constructed as an exemplary-referential structure of mediation and, as a corresponding deeper layer of Brant’s poem in both text and image, refers to a guiding thesaurus of Western knowledge around 1500. The various adaptations of the Narrenschiff draw upon Brant’s literary spatial constructions. At the same time, the Narrenschyp, Locher’s Stultifera navis, and Höniger’s Welt Spiegel transform the literary spatiality of the Narrenschiff. They adapt the literary journey of their fools and readers to the changing requirements of each edition, a different intended readership, shifting social contexts as well as the evolving reception and impact scenarios.