Fools' Journey

This study dedicated to the theme of folly in the northern Renaissance sheds light for the first time on issues that are essential for a comprehensive understanding of the mentalities, as well as the literary and visual manifestations, that characterize the rendering of Folly in the northern Renaissance, particularly in view of the late medieval heritage. The theme of folly in the Middle Ages and the northern Renaissance has mainly been studied from literary and social historical perspectives. The fool's conflicted position in both social and symbolic realms has been defined thusly: while embodying human folly and the entire society of sinners, he at the same time also assumes the position of the wise outsider who points out the culpability of the 'other' fools. The place of the fool in northern late medieval and Renaissance drama, notably in the sottie and morality plays and on the rhetorician's stage, has been widely discussed. The fool's position as the incarnation of revolt against the well-established social order has been studied from various points of view, mainly from historical, sociological and folkloric perspectives. Discussion of the fool in the context of the art of the northern Renaissance remains, inadequate, however. In the field of iconography and visual interpretation of the theme, no comprehensive study has been published to date. In the northern Renaissance, the theme of folly occupies a central place in both literary and visual cultures. The idea of folly haunted the late fifteenth-century imagination. This generation's fears and anxieties were now channeled into an obsession with Folly that inherited the exclusive position that, until then, had been held by theterrifying medieval image of Death. Indeed, this age witnesses the creation of a new myth in which the image of folly mirrors the troubled world-picture.