Fools Are Everywhere

Author: Beatrice K. Otto
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226640914
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 444

Book Description
In this lively work, Beatrice K. Otto takes us on a journey around the world in search of one of the most colorful characters in history—the court jester. Though not always clad in cap and bells, these witty, quirky characters crop up everywhere, from the courts of ancient China and the Mogul emperors of India to those of medieval Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and the Americas. With a wealth of anecdotes, jokes, quotations, epigraphs, and illustrations (including flip art), Otto brings to light little-known jesters, highlighting their humanizing influence on people with power and position and placing otherwise remote historical figures in a more idiosyncratic, intimate light. Most of the work on the court jester has concentrated on Europe; Otto draws on previously untranslated classical Chinese writings and other sources to correct this bias and also looks at jesters in literature, mythology, and drama. Written with wit and humor, Fools Are Everywhere is the most comprehensive look at these roguish characters who risked their necks not only to mock and entertain but also to fulfill a deep and widespread human and social need.

Fools and Jesters at the English Court

Author: John Southworth
Publisher: The History Press
ISBN: 0752479865
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 332

Book Description
Fools have been a feature of virtually every recorded culture in the history of civilization, making significant contributions to the development of early theatre and literary drama. This book offers a reign by reign chronicle of English court fools.

Fools and Jesters in Literature, Art, and History

Author: Vicki K. Janik
Publisher: Greenwood
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 584

Book Description
Jesters and fools have existed as important and consistent figures in nearly all cultures. Sometimes referred to as clowns, they are typological characters who have conventional roles in the arts, often using nonsense to subvert existing order. But fools are also a part of social and religious history, and they frequently play key roles in the rituals that support and shape a society's system of beliefs. This reference book includes alphabetically arranged entries for approximately 60 fools and jesters from a wide range of cultures. Included are entries for performers from American popular culture, such as Woody Allen, Mae West, Charlie Chaplin, and the Marx Brothers; literary characters, such as Shakespeare's Falstaff, Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel, and Singer's Gimpel; and cultural and mythological figures, such as India's Birbal, the American circus clown, the Native American Coyote, Taishu Engeki of Japan, Hephaestus, Loki the Norse fool, schlimiels and schlimazels, and the drag queen. The entries, written by expert contributors, are critical as well as informative. Each begins with a biographical, artistic, religious, or historical background section, which places the subject within a larger cultural and historical context. A description and analysis follow. This section may include a discussion of the fool's appearance, gender role, ethical and moral roles, social function, and relationship to such themes as nature, time, and mortality. The entry then discusses the critical reception of the subject and concludes with an extensive bibliography of general works.

A Social History of the Fool

Author: Sandra Billington
Publisher: Faber & Faber
ISBN: 0571299997
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 161

Book Description
Who is the Fool and what does he mean to us? Pre-1900 scholars thought him a Renaissance fashion, a continental import of note in the British Isles only between 1486 and the 1630s, per his appearances in Shakespeare's plays. However, as Sandra Billington shows in this pioneering study, the Fool has been with us from medieval times and has worn many guises: village idiot and sophisticated comedian, embodiment of Satan and God's own jester. He has managed, as Billington notes, 'to inspire or infect our thinking for at least eight hundred years'.

Three Little Words

Author: Susan Mallery
Publisher: Harlequin
ISBN: 1460316487
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 335

Book Description
Can first love turn into the real deal? Anything can happen in a sizzling new Fool's Gold story from New York Times bestselling author Susan Mallery. Isabel Beebe thinks she's cursed in the romance department. Her teenage crush, Ford Hendrix, ignored all her letters. Her husband left her for another…man. So Isabel has come home to dust off her passion for fashion and run the family bridal shop until her parents are ready to sell it. Then she'll pursue her real dreams. At least, that's the plan, until sexy, charming Ford returns and leaves her feeling fourteen all over again….. Seeing Isabel all grown-up hits bodyguard trainer Ford like a sucker punch. Back when heartbreak made him join the military, her sweet letters kept him sane. Now he can't take his eyes—or his lips—off her. The man who gave up on love has a reason to stay in Fool's Gold forever—if three little words can convince Isabel to do the same.

Four Fools in the Age of Reason

Author: Dorinda Outram
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 0813942020
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 226

Book Description
Unveiling the nearly lost world of the court fools of eighteenth-century Germany, Dorinda Outram shows that laughter was an essential instrument of power. Whether jovial or cruel, mirth altered social and political relations. Outram takes us first to the court of Frederick William I of Prussia, who emerges not only as an administrative reformer and notorious militarist but also as a "master of fools," a ruler who used fools to prop up his uncertain power. The autobiography of the itinerant fool Peter Prosch affords a rare insider’s view of the small courts in Catholic south Germany, Austria, and Bavaria. Full of sharp observations of prelates and princes, the autobiography also records episodes of the extraordinary cruelty for which the German princely courts were notorious. Joseph Fröhlich, court fool in Dresden, presents more appealing facets of foolery. A sharp salesman and hero of the Meissen factories, he was deeply attached to the folk life of fooling. The book ends by tying the growth of Enlightenment skepticism to the demise of court foolery around 1800. Outram’s book is invaluable for giving us such a vivid depiction of the court fool and especially for revealing how this figure can shed new light on the wielding of power in Enlightenment Europe.

Too Big to Know

Author: David Weinberger
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465038727
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Book Description
"If anyone knows anything about the web, where it's been and where it's going, it's David Weinberger. . . . Too Big To Know is an optimistic, if not somewhat cautionary tale, of the information explosion." -- Steven Rosenbaum, Forbes With the advent of the Internet and the limitless information it contains, we're less sure about what we know, who knows what, or even what it means to know at all. And yet, human knowledge has recently grown in previously unimaginable ways and in inconceivable directions. In Too Big to Know, David Weinberger explains that, rather than a systemic collapse, the Internet era represents a fundamental change in the methods we have for understanding the world around us. With examples from history, politics, business, philosophy, and science, Too Big to Know describes how the very foundations of knowledge have been overturned, and what this revolution means for our future.

Fool Moon

Author: Jim Butcher
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1440631697
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 432

Book Description
“One of the most enjoyable marriages of the fantasy and mystery genres on the shelves,”(Cinescape) the Dresden Files have become synonymous with action-packed urban fantasy and nonstop fun. Fool Moon continues the adventures of Jim Butcher’s most famous—and infamous—reluctant hero… You’d think there’d be a little more action for the only professional wizard listed in the Chicago phone book. But lately, Harry Dresden hasn’t been able to dredge up any kind of work: magical, mundane, or menial. Just when it looks like he can’t afford his next meal, a murder comes along that requires his particular brand of supernatural expertise. There’s a brutally mutilated corpse, and monstrous animal markings at the scene. Not to mention that the killing took place on the night of a full moon. Harry knows exactly where this case is headed. Take three guesses—and the first two don’t count...

Fool's Paradise

Author: John Gierach
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0743291735
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 227

Book Description
A lighthearted and lyrical new collection of observations on fly-fishing by the author of Still Life with Brook Trout features whimsical complaints about what the author believes is wrong with the world, both within and outside the fishing community. 50,000 first printing.

Ship of Fools

Author: Tucker Carlson
Publisher: Free Press
ISBN: 1501183672
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Book Description
The #1 New York Times bestseller from FOX News star of Tucker Carlson Tonight offers “a targeted snipe at the Democrats and Republicans and their elite enablers” (New York Journal of Books) in a funny political commentary on how America’s ruling class has failed everyday Americans. “Informal and often humorous…an entertainingly told narrative of elite malfeasance” (Publishers Weekly), Tucker Carlson’s Ship of Fools tells the truth about the new American elites, a group whose power and wealth has grown beyond imagination even as the rest of the country has withered. The people who run America now barely interact with it. They fly on their own planes, ski on their own mountains, watch sporting events far from the stands in sky boxes. They have total contempt for you. In Ship of Fools, Tucker Carlson offers a blistering critique of our new overlords and answers the all-important question: How do we put the country back on course? Traditional liberals are gone, he writes. The patchouli-scented hand-wringers who worried about whales and defended free speech have been replaced by globalists who hide their hard-edged economic agenda behind the smokescreen of identity politics. They’ll outsource your job while lecturing you about transgender bathrooms. Left and right, Carlson says, are no longer meaningful categories in America. “The rift is between those who benefit from the status quo, and those who don’t.” Our leaders are fools, Carlson concludes, “unaware that they are captains of a sinking ship.” But in the signature and witty style that viewers of Tucker Carlson Tonight enjoy so much, Ship of Fools is “bulging with big and interesting ideas, presented succinctly with wit and precision, each chapter a potential book in itself” (The Washington Times).