19th century, Europe, primary source, quotes, Russia, Russian
A salient characteristic of the jester is the right to speak out, or in any case, freely. Their licence to say whatever they feel like is widely acknowledged even if sometimes it was curtailed by an offended king or other bigwig in the moment. After the court jester...
bibliography, book, canon, England, Europe, folk fool, France, German, Germany, Greece, historical figure, Italy, primary source, research, Russia, Spain, Turkey
Published in 1789, Flögel’s hefty 500+ page history of court jesters is breathtaking in its scope and scholarship; arguably the first serious such sweeping study in any Western language. It is the well-spring from which many subsequent leading works draw,...
19th century, fictive fool, primary source, quotes, Russia, Russian
GAP MAP: A gaping hole in our knowledge of jesters, at least in materials available in European languages, concerns examples from Russia. It would do a great service to foolology (fool studies) if a Russian scholar were to dive in and see if they can find more. In...
19th century, fooleum, primary source, Russia, Russian
The skomorokh is a Russian term which spans entertainers, musicians, buffoons, jesters, harlequins, minstrels or actors. This is a 19th century depiction of a skomorokh and his costume by Apollinary Vasnetsov (1856-1933). It isn’t clear if it is a portrait of...
19th century, fictive fool, primary source, quotes, Russia, Russian, stories
One of the fun things about walking around with a radar permanently programmed to scan the world for fools is the random pleasure of stumbling upon them in unexpected places. Having noted a reference to a household fool in Tolstoy’s War and Peace, I enjoyed...
16th century, English, historical figure, primary source, quotes, Russia, stories
Giles Fletcher was appointed English ambassador to Tsar Fedor I (r. 1584-98) on 6th June 1588. His account of his stay in Moscow was one of the most widely read travel books in Elizabethan England and provides an early first-hand Western account of dwarfs and jesters...
19th century, fictive fool, primary source, quotes, Russia, Russian, stories
I liked this example of a fool in a Russian household, as described by Tolstoy in War and Peace. I also like the buffoon’s nonsense response to a question that is in some ways unanswerable. See another reference to a female fool in the same novel. ‘Nastasya...
20th century, fictive fool, primary source, quotes, Russia, Russian, stories
Russia has a long and noble tradition of holy fools, and I was struck by this spontaneous example from the Second World War recounted by Vasily Grossman. It seems it was an old soldier who had enough oddity or madness about him to be perceived as a holy fool by his...
