Chapter 1 - “The number of fuillis ar infinite”: Framing “Foolery” as Disability in Premodern Performance

Summary

So Many Studies of the medieval and early modern fool-figure have appeared over the last few decades and are so numerous that any attempt to survey them here would prove a fool's errand. Moreover, the performing fool figure is ubiquitous in premodern art and literature. Being the most accessible to modern scholars, literary and artistic representations of fools, madmen, joculatori, and the like often make up the primary, if not entire evidence base of many studies. Early medical, legal, and philosophical writings are occasionally brought to bear, often with enlightening results. One of the problems with a study focused on literary and artistic representations, though, is that, to some degree, such approach foregrounds a fiction: the “fools” recovered may simply represent the idealized representations or imagined chimeras of the premodern imagination. Undoubtedly this can help illuminate various contemporary conceptualizations of mentally or intellectually differentiated performers. Yet it is only by focussing on the surviving evidence for actual performing fools—such as the historic records provided by REED, for example—that one might construct a more fact-based understanding of the potential position of mental or intellectual disability as an aspect of premodern performance.

One obvious issue with attempting to study premodern constructions of intellectual difference is that the past remains a foreign country. Standard medical diagnoses used to identify or describe individual conditions today stand at odds with much premodern thinking on human anatomy and physiology. Moreover, the modern “medical” model of disability really developed in the aftermath of the Enlightenment, and arguably isn't as applicable as many social, cultural, and/or religious models more appropriate to the earlier period.3 Of course, the premodern era had its rationalizing impulses, but, at the same time, spiritual or theological significance was frequently associated with perceived disability. Even when a “medical” approach to mental or intellectual difference is employed in the period, it is often ascribed a sociological and/or religious aetiology.

Like the blind-leading-the-blind metaphorizing discussed in the introduction, many literary representations of the fool-figure in the period tend to foreground moral or religious ideals, with little attempt to reflect social or biological realities. A much-cited example is John Lydgate's (ca. 1370–ca. 1451) poem on “The Order of Fools,” which contains descriptions of no less than “thre skore ffoolys and thre,” each with its own briefly sketched empirical taxonomy.