Forging the canon ...

In addition to being an exuberant celebration, foolsareeverywhere.com aims to be the global scholarly reference and springboard for further fool studies.  As such, a serious consideration is how best to present the hundreds of references used in writing the book and discovered since.  

Simply pouring out an alphabetic cascade of names and titles feels like overload in an online medium, even though it works in a printed book. Surely too-much-too-soon for readers who, however intrigued by the fool, may have other demands on their time.  So I’m taking a more organic approach…

Aims and approaches

More useful – I believe – is to highlight meaningful additions to the literature of fools as I find or revisit them. The approach will be to both evaluate their contribution to ‘foolology’ (including their originality, appeal and eloquence), while ‘mining’ them for valuable jester stories, examples, images and quotations which may or may not have made it into Fools Are Everywhere. 

The aim on this and a companion page is to build a judiciously selected and annotated canon of primary and secondary sources complemented by a bibliography of erudite yet engaging studies.

This will also inform the development of a ‘gap map’ highlighting neglected areas of research or translation, encouraging people to plough fresh furrows in the field of fools.  

But let’s get started.  There’s a lot to feature, and time is short…

Latest additions

Review: `Dongfang Shuo zhuan' 東方朔傳, in Hanshu 漢書, by Ban Gu 班固 (32-92)
Review: `Lingguan zhuan' 伶官傳, in Xin Wudai shi 新五代史 (New History of the Five Dynasties), by Ouyang Xiu 歐陽脩

Alphabetically by author

Review of Erasmus' Praise of Folly / Moriae Encomium
Review of `Huixie zhuan' 詼諧傳, in Nan Tang shu 南唐書, by Ma Ling 馬令 (c. 1105)

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