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The fool is a stock character in creative works (literature, film, etc.) and folklore. There are several distinct, although overlapping, categories of fool: simpleton fool, wise fool, and serendipitous fool. The six volume Motif-Index of Folk-Literature contains (in volume four) a group of motifs under the category "Fools (and other unwise ...
The Fool provides wit in this bleak play and unlike some of Shakespeare's clowns who seem unfunny to us today because their topical jokes no longer make sense, the Fool in King Lear ridicules Lear's actions and situation in such a way that audiences understand the point of his jokes. His 'mental eye' is the most acute in the beginning of the ...
In the Romantic reaction to Enlightenment wisdom, a valorisation of the irrational, the foolish, and the stupid emerged, as in William Blake's dictum that "if the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise"; [14] or Jung's belief that "it requires no art to become stupid; the whole art lies in extracting wisdom from stupidity ...
The term useful idiot, for a foolish person whose views can be taken advantage of for political purposes, was used in a British periodical as early as 1864. [3] In relation to the Cold War, the term appeared in a June 1948 New York Times article on contemporary Italian politics ("Communist shift is seen in Europe"), [1] citing the Italian Democratic Socialist Party's newspaper L'Umanità []. [4]
Ivar Nilsson as the Fool in a 1908 stage production of King Lear at The Royal Dramatic Theatre in Sweden [5]. In his article "The Wisdom of the Fool", Walter Kaiser illustrates that the varied names and words people have attributed to real fools in different societies when put altogether reveal the general characteristics of the wise fool as a literary construct: "empty-headed (μάταιος ...
The Idiot by Evert Larock (1892). An idiot, in modern use, is a stupid or foolish person. 'Idiot' was formerly a technical term in legal and psychiatric contexts for some kinds of profound intellectual disability where the mental age is two years or less, and the person cannot guard themself against common physical dangers.
A jester, also known as joker, court jester, or fool, was a member of the household of a nobleman or a monarch kept to entertain guests at the royal court.Jesters were also travelling performers who entertained common folk at fairs and town markets, and the discipline continues into the modern day, where jesters perform at historical-themed events.
Andreas Maercker in 1995 defined foolishness as rigid, dogmatic, and inflexible thinking which makes feelings of bitterness and probable annoyance. It is considered the foundation of illusions of grandiosity like omniscience, omnipotence and inviolability.