dramatic character, fictive fool, folk fool, historical figure, quotes, stories
Dear Friends of Fools, Happy to announce you can now also follow the fool on our recently launched Instagram account.  See you there (and here, of course). And thank you for your continuing support, next batch of anecjokes coming up soon… Yours, in joy and...
folk fool, historical figure, stories
Delighted to announce the launch of a short animated lesson on fools, developed with TED Education. Join over a million others in watching this playful five-minute video, also available on YouTube. Â And feel free to use the teaching prompts if you’re in the...
Europe, folk fool, German, Germany, primary source, quotes, stories
Eulenspiegel, commonly depicted in the full fools’ garb of cap and bells, was more a trickster than a jester. But he had enough of the latter to put the wind up some of the court jesters he encountered, besting them on their own turf, precisely because he was...
China, dramatic character, Europe, folk fool, historical figure, painting, portrait
As part of the Festival of the Fool, we invite you to join this lively, illustrated online presentation, in which Beatrice Otto will share some gems from the virtual museum of fools and jesters she is building, taking us on a short walk through ‘The...
folk fool, India, primary source, quotes, stories
A regular theme in the foolosphere has the fool besting someone supposedly wiser, smarter, holier or otherwise superior. There’s a whole raft of stories of jesters engaging with scholars and tying them in semantic knots, and in China this extends to grappling...
6th century, folk fool, India, primary source, quotes, Sanskrit
A lively line up of skills and attributes reminding me of jesters and in particular vidusaka, the stock comic character of Sanskrit drama, commonly paired up in a close if argumentative relationship between a king and the jester. His appearance in plays and the...
folk fool, India, primary source, quotes, stories
Tenali Rama is one of the great legendary jesters of India, and stories about his exposing corruption, lies and nonsense abound.  He even exposed the king himself in one account. An enemy of the king bribed his astrologer to dissuade him from a military campaign by...
Central Asia, folk fool, India, primary source, quotes, stories
There is an anecdote attributed to various giants of jesterdom, including the Indian Gopal, (`So exquisite was Gopal’s wit that he violated the laws of the domain and defied the Rama’s pride with impunity’), along with the Central Asian folk fool...
