Fool, The: His Social and Literary History

Welsford, Enid. The Fool: His Social and Literary History. 1935. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1961.

The fool, Harlequin, Trickster, and Lord of Misrule have often been used by wise societies as antidotes for the stagnation and oppression threatened or achieved by too much social order. EW's work is the classic investigation of the role of the fool. (Note the Jester in A. C. Clarke's, The City and the Stars, and H. Ellison's Harlequin hero in "Repent, Harlequin!"; both works cited under Fiction.)

RDE, Title, 8Aug19