BIBLIOGRAPHY
Important general studies of fools and folly include Carl
F. Flögel, Geschichte des Grotesk-Komischen, ed. Max Bauer
(Munich, 1914); Michel Foucault, Folie et déraison: histoire
de la folie à l'âge classique (Paris, 1961); Joel Lefebvre, Les
Fols et la folie (Paris, 1968); Barbara Swain, Fools and Folly
during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (New York,
1932); Erica Tietze-Conrat, Dwarfs and Jesters in Art (New
York, 1957); and Enid Welsford, The Fool: His Social and
Literary History (London, 1935).
Especially valuable studies on more specific aspects of
late-medieval, Renaissance, and humanist fools, some of
which contain important general and theoretical discus-
sions, are: Walter Gaedik, Der Weise Narr in der englischen
Literatur von Erasmus bis Shakespeare (Weimar and Leipzig,
1928); Hadumoth Hanckel, Narrendarstellungen im Spät-
mittelalter (Freiburg, 1952); Marieluise Held, Das Narren-
thema in der Satire am Vorabend und in der Frühzeit der
Reformation (Marburg, 1945); C. H. Herford, Studies in the
Literary Relations of England and Germany in the Sixteenth
Century (Cambridge, 1886); Walter Kaiser, Praisers of Folly:
Erasmus, Rabelais, Shakespeare (Cambridge, Mass., 1963);
Robert Klein, “Un aspect de l'herméneutique à l'âge de
l'humanisme: le thème fou et l'ironie humaniste,”
Umanesimo e Ermeneutica, Archivio di Filosofia, 3 (1963),
11-25, reprinted in R. Klein, La Forme et l'intelligible (Paris,
1970), pp. 433-50; Barbara Könneker, Wesen und Wandlung
der Narrenidee im Zeitalter des Humanismus: Brant—
Murner—Erasmus (Wiesbaden, 1966); Irmgaard Meiners,
Schelm und Dümmling in Erzählungen des deutschen
Mittelalters (Munich, 1967); Rocco Montano, Follia e sag-
gezza nel Furioso e nell' Elogio di Erasmo (Naples, 1942);
and H. de Vocht, De Invloed van Erasmus op de Engelsche
Tooneelliteratuur der XVIe en XVIIe Eeuwen (Ghent, 1908).
For court fools, see John Doran, The History of Court Fools
(London, 1858) and Carl F. Flögel, Geschichte der Hofnarren
(Leipzig, 1789). Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens: A Study
of the Play-Element in Culture (Boston, 1950) and William
Willeford, The Fool and His Scepter: A Study in Clowns
and Their Audience (Evanston, 1969) emphasize the socio-
logical and psychological aspects of folly. The Fool in Christ
is treated by Walter Nigg, Der christliche Narr (Zurich and
Stuttgart, 1956); and E. Vansteenberghe has written a useful
introduction to Cusanus' doctrine in Autour de la docte
ignorance. Une Controverse sur la théologie mystique au XVe
siècle (Münster, 1914). Three basic works for the fool in
drama are E. K. Chambers, The Mediaeval Stage, 2 vols.
(Oxford, 1903); Gustave Cohen, Le Théâtre en France au
Moyen Age (Paris, 1928); and Allardyce Nicoll, Masks, Mime,
and Miracles (New York, 1931; reprint 1964). Heinz Wyss
has written an important monograph on Der Narr im
Schweizerischen Drama des 16. Jahrhunderts (Bern, 1959).
Among many studies on Elizabethan and Shakespearean
dramatic fools, the following are particularly useful: C. L.
Barber, Shakespeare's Festive Comedy (Princeton, 1959);
Olive Busby, The Development of the Fool in Elizabethan
Drama (Oxford, 1923); Robert Goldsmith, Wise Fools in
Shakespeare (East Lansing, 1955); Leslie Hotson, Shake-
speare's Motley (London, 1952); and Annemarie Schöne,
“Die weisen Narren Shakespeares und ihre Vorfahren,”
Jahrbuch für Aesthetik und allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft,
5 (1960), 202ff.
WALTER KAISER
[See also
Comic; Irony; Primitivism;
Rationality.]
