Day of Fools

April 1 is the day called "April Fools' Day" in some parts of the world.... and so we offer some links and cites on the subject of fools--a disability history topic, after all:

*An excerpt from Beatrice K. Otto's Fools Are Everywhere: The Court Jester around the World (U of Chicago Press 2001).

*Dana Heller, "Holy Fools, Secular Saints, and Illiterate Saviors in American Literature and Popular Culture," Comparative Cultural Studies and Popular Culture 5(3)(September 2003): online here.

*"The Folly of the Freedom of Fools," a March 1918 article from The Survey, archived at the Disability History Museum.

*C. F. Goodey, "'Foolishness' in Early Modern Medicine and the Concept of Intellectual Disability," Medical History 48(3)(2004): 289-310.

*Anna Lavis, "'La Muse Malade,' 'The Fool's Perceptions,' and 'Il Furore dell' Arte': An examination of the Socio-cultural Construction of Genius Through Madness," Anthropology and Medicine 12(2)(August 2005): 151-164.

Image: Sebastian Brant, Ship of Fools (1494)