Behaving like Fools - Lucy Perry
Voice, Gesture, and Laughter in Texts, Manuscripts, and Early Books
KORTE INHOUD
The period from 1200 to 1600 was the golden age of fools. From representations of irreverent acts to full-blown insanity, fools appeared on the misericords of gothic churches and in the plots of Arthurian narratives, before achieving a wider prominence in literature and iconography in the decades around 1500. But how are we to read these figures appropriately? Is it possible to reconstruct the fascination that fools exerted on the medieval and early modern mind? While modern theories give us the analytical tools to explore this subject, we are faced with the paradox that by striving to understand fools and foolishness we no longer accept their ways but impose rational categories on them. Together these essays propose one way out of this dilemma. Instead of attempting to define the fool or trying to find the common denominator behind his many masks, this volume focuses on the qualities, acts, and gestures that signify foolishness. By investigating different manifestations of foolery rather than the figure of t...
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2011Uitgever: Brepols Publishers301 paginasTaal: EngelsISBN-10: 2503531571ISBN-13: 9782503531571Koop dit boek tweedehands
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This collection of essays brings together the most up-to-date work on the subject of fools and foolishness in English, Dutch, French, and German literature, art, and society from 1200 to 1600, providing a refreshing approach to the well-known subject of foolery. The period from 1200 to 1600 was the golden age of fools. From representations of irreverent acts to full-blown insanity, fools appeared on the misericords of gothic churches and in the plots of Arthurian narratives, before achieving a wider promine...
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The essays in this collection present new research into a variety of questions on birth, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, middle age, and old age, ordered in a more or less chronological manner according to the lifecycle. The volume exposes attitudes and representations of the lifecycle from the Anglo-Saxon period to the end of the Middle Ages as being full of inconsistencies as well as definitive categories, and of variation and stasis. This attests to the fact that medieval conceptions and representatio...