17th century, 18th century, bibliography, book, canon, China, Chinese, dramatic character, East Asia, historical figure, play, primary source
There are several plays featuring Dongfang Shuo 東方朔 (c. 160 – c. 93 BCE) as a jester. Apart from an anonymous and non-extant Ming dynasty variety play called simply Dongfang Shuo, there is a twenty act chuanqi play by Wu Dexiu 吾德修 (fl.c. 1692) entitled The...
2nd century BCE, bibliography, canon, China, Chinese, East Asia, folk fool, Han dynasty, historical figure, primary source, quotes, stories
One of many sources concerning the clever and outspoken Dongfang Shuo 東方朔 (c. 160 – c. 93 BCE), part courtier, part jester and, according to some more outlandish claims, a Daoist immortal. Known among ordinary people for his dazzling wit and intricate riddles,...
10th century, bibliography, canon, China, Chinese, East Asia, historical figure, primary source, quotes, stories, Tang dynasty
Ouyang Xiu’s 歐陽脩 (1007-72) ‘Lingguan zhuan’ 伶官傳 (Biographies of Jesters) in the New History of the Five Dynasties is a key primary source for Chinese accounts of jesters at the court of Tang Zhuangzong 後唐莊宗 (r. 923-26), with particular emphasis on...
16th century, bibliography, book, canon, Europe, fictive fool, Latin, Netherlands, primary source, quotes
Rulers, for all the advantages they enjoy, seem to me in one respect most disadvantaged: they’ve nobody from whom they can hear the truth; in place of friends they’re lumbered with flatterers. p. 45The Moriae Encomium by Erasmus (1469-1536), written in...
10th century, bibliography, book, canon, China, Chinese, East Asia, historical figure, primary source, Southern Tang
The Song dynasty Ma Ling (fl. c. 1105) wrote a history of the Southern Tang, a short-lived dynasty (937-75) which was one of the Ten States in southern China in the 10th century. Among its imperial and other biographies, there is one folio dedicated to jesters, the...
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,...
bibliography, book, canon, China, Chinese, East Asia, historical figure, primary source, research
For any serious study of Chinese jesters, this is the ‘Bible’, bringing together practically the full spectrum of primary source accounts of jester doings and sayings stretching over a few millennia. Quoting well over 400 stories, skits and anecdotes from histories,...
2nd century BCE, bibliography, book, canon, China, Chinese, East Asia, Han dynasty, historical figure, primary source, Qin dynasty
There are a hundred ways to kick off a canon*, and one on fools and jesters could trigger as much argument about what should be included as any other body of essential works on a given topic. One advantage of slow-mo online accretion is that it is never final and so...
