Fool
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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A fool there was and he made his prayer --"The Vampire" (1897) by Rudyard Kipling "The jest-books gave birth also to a satirical fool-literature, best represented by Sebastian Brandt's Narrenschiff (1494)."--The Literature of Roguery (1907) by Frank Wadleigh Chandler "For I am, as you see, that true and only giver of wealth whom the Greeks call Moria, the Latins Stultitia, and our plain English Folly."--The Praise of Folly (1511) by Erasmus “[The fool in literature is] privileged to speak out, usually on behalf of a satirical view of actuality, against received opinion, convention, and social cliché, the Fool (in literature at least) was a rich source for paradoxical utterance. From Socrates, who alleged that his only knowledge was the limitation of his own knowledge, via Saint Paul and the Pseudo-Dionysius to Nicholas of Cusa and Erasmus, docta ignorantia was attributed to the gifted fool. Alcibiades’ image from the Symposium, of Socrates as an ugly Silenus-box containing the sweetest perfume, was explicated by Erasmus in the Adagia, exploited in the Moriae encomium (Praise of Folly), adapted by Rabelais in the Preface to Gargantua, and referred to by a host of other paradoxists as a visual emblem of the functions of the formal paradox, evidently ugly but with a sweet truth within. Falstaff belongs in this company of wise fools, though he has none of the spirituality of Erasmus’ “Saint Socrates”; Lear’s fool is wisely ignorant, speaks in grammatical paradoxes and touches on many paradoxical topics (nothing, shadow, folly, codpiece, world-upside-down); Lear himself is schooled to the piercing accuracy of moral and social judgment characteristic of the highest forms of Renaissance folly.” –”Literary Paradox” in Dictionary of the History of Ideas via [1] "The jest-books gave birth also to a satirical fool-literature, best represented by Sebastian Brandt's Narrenschiff (1494)."--The Literature of Roguery (1907) by Frank Wadleigh Chandler |
Illustration: Mona Lisa Smoking a Pipe by Eugène Bataille
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A fool is a jester, a clown, a harlequin or a bouffon. Foolishness refers to the quality of having poor judgement or little intelligence.
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Etymology
From Middle English fōl (“fool”) from Old French fol (French fou (“mad”)) from Latin follis.
Fool may also refer to:
- Illiterate
- Foolishness, the quality of having poor judgment or little intelligence, see below
- The Fool (Tarot card), a Tarot card
- Fool (stock character), in literature and folklore
- Shakespearean fool, an archetypal character in numerous works by Shakespeare* Shakespearean fool, an archetypal character in numerous works by Shakespeare
- The Fool (design collective), a Dutch design collective and band influential in the psychedelic style of art in the 1960s
In the visual arts
- Illustration: Laughing Fool by a Netherlandish painter (possibly Jacob Cornelisz. van Oostsanen).
Foolishness
Foolishness is the lack or failure of wisdom and of making proper careful choices. In this sense, it differs from stupidity, which is the lack of intelligence. An act of foolishness is called folly. Foolish talk is called stultiloquence or morology.
Foolishness and wisdom are contrasted in Paul's letter to the Corinthians. He condemns intellectual arrogance and advocates a humble attitude of foolishness in which it is then possible to learn. Plato likewise said, "He is the wisest man who knows himself to be ill-equipped for the study of wisdom", but Paul makes a distinction between wisdom and the reason of the Greeks.
Concept
The Book of Proverbs characterizes traits of foolishness. Foolishness and wisdom are contrasted in Paul's letter to the Corinthians. He condemns intellectual arrogance and advocates a humble attitude instead of foolishness, in which it is then possible to learn.
Plato transvalued reason over foolishness, to him integrity of acceptance of a state itself was the beginning of wisdom, he said "He is the wisest man who knows himself to be ill-equipped for the study of wisdom".
- See also
- Absurdity
- As a dog returns to his vomit, so a fool repeats his folly - specific biblical proverb
- Ridiculous
- Silliness
- In Praise of Folly
See also
- April Fools' Day
- Folly
- Feast of fools
- Fool's gold
- Folly (allegory)
- Joker
- Morosophy
- Stupidity
- Wise fool
- "Everybody Plays the Fool"
