The English clown tradition from the middle ages to Shakespeare
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The English clown tradition from the middle ages to Shakespeare
（Studies in Renaissance literature / general editor: John T. Shawcross, v. 26）
D.S. Brewer, 2013, c2009
- : pbk
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Note
Bibliography: p. 205-222
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
A new account of medieval and Renaissance clown traditions reveals the true extent of their cultural influence.
From the late-medieval period through to the seventeenth century, English theatrical clowns carried a weighty cultural significance, only to have it stripped from them, sometimes violently, by the close of the Renaissance when the famed "license" of fooling was effectively revoked. This groundbreaking survey of clown traditions in the period looks both at their history, and reveals their hidden cultural contexts and legacies; it has far-reaching implications not only for our general understanding of English clown types, but also their considerable role in defining social, religious and racial boundaries. It begins with an exploration of previously un-noted early representations of blackness in medieval psalters, cycle plays, and Tudor interludes, arguing that they are emblematic of folly and ignorance rather than of evil. Subsequent chapters show how protestants at Cambridge and at court, during the reigns of Henry VIII and Edward, patronised a clownish, iconoclastic Lord of Misrule; look at the Elizabethan puritan stage clown; and move on to a provocative reconsideration of the Fool in King Lear, drawing completely fresh conclusions. Finally, the epilogue points to the satirical clowning which took place surreptitiously in the Interregnum, and the (sometimes violent) end of "licensed" folly.
Professor ROBERT HORNBACK teaches in the Departments of Literature and Theatre at Oglethorpe University.
Table of Contents
Introduction. Unearthing Yoricks: Literary Archaeology and the Ideologies of Early English Clowning
Folly as Proto-Racism: Blackface in the "Natural" Fool Tradition
"Sports and Follies Against the Pope": Tudor Evangelical Lords of Misrule
"Verie Devout Asses": Ignorant Puritan Clows
The Fool "by Art": The All-Licensed "Artificial" Fool in the King Lear Quarto
Epilogue. License Revoked: Ending an Era
by "Nielsen BookData"