Four Fools in the Age of Reason

This book is original to an exceptional degree. The fools Outram discusses reveal a past age in its strangest and most alien form, especially in showing an alliance between power, cruelty, and fun which must be shocking to present-day readers. --Ritchie Robertson, University of Oxford, author of Mock-Epic Poetry from Pope to Heine If one thinks that court fools had disappeared from the European stage by the eighteenth century, this fascinating book proves one wrong. German courts of the eighteenth century did not just host philosophes and Aufklarer, such as Voltaire and Lessing. In Four Fools in the Age of Reason, Dorinda Outram uncovers the biographies of fools migrating from one court to another, such as Peter Prosch or the improbably named Joseph Froehlich, and places them alongside the better-known figure of Jacob Paul Gundling, who thus appears in a novel light as well. Based on extensive research, this stimulating, elegantly written, and convincingly argued book reestablishes fools at the heart of the "Age of Enlightenment", and challenges not only our view of the eighteenth century, but also our own notions of rationality. --Thomas Biskup, University of Hull, author of Friedrichs Groesse: Inszenierungen des Preussenkoenigs in Fest und Zeremoniell, 1740-1815 Outram (Univ. of Rochester) adds to her previous books on the Enlightenment and the French Revolution with a wonderful new tome about German royal courts and the role of the court fool. Outram studies four fools in German courts as Europe developed during the Enlightenment.... Taken together, these cases shed light on the different ways in which power was exercised across Germany and throughout Enlightenment Europe, offering excellent historiographies. Though perhaps unfamiliar to many scholars, this interesting topic provides a stimulating read. --CHOICE Outram's slim book is beautifully written, fast-paced, and a fun read. It shines a light on forgottenfigures in German history and reveals how inextricable perverse laughter and violenceare to our understanding of the self-styled age of reason. This book should be read byanyone interested in the European intellectual or cultural history of the eighteenthcentury and it will make avid converts of those who have not yet discovered the abidingfascination of this pivotal age for our own time. --German Studies Review

Dorinda Outram is Gladys I. and Franklin W. Clark Professor of History at the University of Rochester and the author of Panorama of the Enlightenment and other books.