Clowns, Fools, and Jesters

Pussy Riot’s surprise punk prayer at the altar of Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ Our Savior instigated significant controversy in Russia and resulted in the conviction of three Pussy Riot members on the charge of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.” While the Russian Orthodox Church swiftly condemned the performance as blasphemous, Pussy Riot has contended that its punk prayer is consistent with the message of the Gospels. This study investigates the punk prayer controversy in relation to the figure of the holy fool, a radical behavioral model canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church and secularized in Russia’s literary and artistic traditions.

Sicut scriptum est». La parola scritta e i suoi molteplici valori nel millennio medievale PROSPETTIVE STORICHE Studi e ricerche collana diretta da «Sicut scriptum est». La parola scritta e i suoi molteplici valori nel millennio medievale «Sicut scriptum est». La parola scritta e i suoi molteplici valori nel millennio medievale La pubblicazione del presente volume è stata realizzata con il contributo dell'Università degli Studi di Torino, Dipartimento di Studi Storici Pubblicazione resa disponibile nei termini della licenza Creative Commons Attribuzione -Non commerciale -Non opere derivate 4.0 Possono applicarsi condizioni ulteriori contattando info@aAccademia.it prima edizione febbraio 2020 isbn 978-88-31978-66-8 edizioni digitali www.aAccademia.it/sicutscriptum est book design boffetta.com V Indice Introduzione Francesco Cissello, Elena Corniolo, Alessia Francone, Marina Sarramia VII Registrare, controllare e… eternare. Dal documento alla charta lapidaria, esempi di contratti e donazioni nel territorium di Roma e del Lazio fra vi e xii secolo Arianna Nastasi 3 Memorie di un ambasciatore a Costantinopoli: Anastasio Bibliotecario tra rappresentazione di sé e racconto storico Giulia Cò 23 «Quoniam ego novi quod in hoc cenobio multi sunt fratres, qui ignorant rationes et iura illorum». I diplomi fondativi dell'abbazia di Nonantola nella memoria della comunità monastica: ricezione, conservazione e rielaborazione della documentazione pubblica Edoardo Manarini 40 «De ista ora in antea tuus fidelis ero». I giuramenti di fedeltà alla corte di Barcellona tra xi e xii secolo Simona Serci 68 Un vescovato allo specchio. Il Liber affictum, pensionum, reddituum et proventuum dell'Archivio storico diocesano di Volterra Jacopo Paganelli 90 La prima predicazione di Valdo? Riflessioni sul Chronicon Universale di Laon Francesca Tasca 103 La firma di Dio? Il Memoriale di Angela da Foligno tra oralità, scrittura e legittimazione Francesco Pacia 122 «Mi pare esser con voi a faccia»: tracce di oralità nelle epistole di Lapo Mazzei a Francesco Datini Gloria Camesasca 143 «Sicut scriptum est». La parola scritta e i suoi molteplici valori nel millennio medievale «Sicut scriptum est». La parola scritta e i suoi molteplici valori nel millennio medievale 104 Il Chronicon Universale dell'anonimo di Laon Il Chronicon Universale di Laon è una cronaca anonima che abbraccia un arco temporale molto ampio: prende inizio con la fondazione del mondo e s'interrompe, bruscamente, all'anno 1219. Dell'anonimo autore, probabilmente un monaco premostratense del monastero di San Martino di Laon, in Piccardia, si è ipotizzata un'origine inglese in base ad alcune tracce interne alla narrazione del Chronicon 3 . Ma sono, queste, soltanto mere ipotesi. Di certo -lo si ribadisce -non si sa nulla. Il Chronicon Universale è attestato in due soli manoscritti 4 . Databile all'inizio del xiii secolo, il manoscritto più antico -e riferimento per le edizioni -è il ms. Phillips 1880, conservato oggi presso la Staatsbibliothek di Berlino 5 . Vi è, poi, del pieno xiii secolo il ms. lat. 5011, custodito presso la Bibliothèque Nationale di Parigi 6 : si tratta di una nitida copia del manoscritto berlinese. A oggi esistono del Chronicon Universale tre edizioni, ma tutte e tre parziali. Una prima edizione di parti notevoli (relative agli anni 1165-1219) si trova nel Recueil des Historiens des Gaules et de la France promosso dal maurino Martin Bouquet 7 (voll. 13 e 18). La seconda edizione, curata 3. Si veda per esempio A. Cartellieri, W. Stechele (herausgegeben von), Chronicon Universale Anonymi laudunensis. Von 1154 bis zum Schluss (1219) für akademische Übungen, Dyksche Buchandlung, Alphonse Picard et Fils, Leipzig-Paris 1909, pp. 68 sg.: «Sermo ei rarus, sed si loqui opportuit, ita preceps et barbarus, ut a multis Scota esse crederetur.

An overview of the Fools Are Everywhere project which builds on the book of the same title, creating a global online resource dedicated to the study and appreciation of fools and jesters across history. 

Please visit: www.foolsareverywhere.com

Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini (1920-1993) is one of the most renowned figures in world cinema. Director of a long list of critically acclaimed motion pictures, including La strada, La dolce vita, 8½, and Amarcord, Fellini's success helped strengthen the international prestige of Italian cinema from the 1950s onward. Often remembered as an eccentric auteur with a vivid imagination and a penchant for quasi-autobiographical works, the carnivalesque, and Rubenesque women, Fellini's inimitable films celebrate the creative potential of cinema as a medium and also provide thought-provoking evocations of various periods in Italian history, from the years of fascism to the age of Silvio Berlusconi's media empire.

In Making a Film Fellini discusses his childhood and adolescence in the coastal town of Rimini, the time he spent as a cartoonist, journalist, and screenwriter in Rome, his decisive encounter with Roberto Rossellini, and his own movies, from Variety Lights to Casanova. The director explains the importance of drawing to his creative process, the mysterious ways in which ideas for films arise, his collaborations with his wife, Giulietta Masina, his thoughts on fascism, Jung, and the relationship between cinema and television. Often comic, sometimes tragic, and rife with insightful comments on his craft, Making a Film sheds light on Fellini's life and reveals the motivations behind many of his most fascinating movies.

Available in its entirety for the first time in English, this volume contains the complete translation of Fare un film, the authoritative collection of writings edited and reworked by Fellini and initially published by Giulio Einaudi in 1980. The text includes a new translation of the Italo Calvino essay "A Spectator's Autobiography," an introduction by Italian film scholar Christopher B. White, and an afterword by Fellini's longtime friend and collaborator Liliana Betti.

Few people would describe the tragedy of King Lear or the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas as funny. To the contrary, these works feel weighty, momentous, and serious. In "Sweet Fooling," however, I use recent work on the place of humor in Levinas's ethical thought to examine the role of the Fool in Shakespeare's great tragedy. I demonstrate that the Fool's humor is profoundly ethical, inviting the king to laugh, both at himself (in a self-critical act of abdication) and with others (in a generative opening toward interrelation). The king may or may not accept these invitations, but the Fool relentlessly pushes the play in ethical directions by using humor to place himself before the other in a posture of vulnerability and exposure that Levinas sees as the foundation for all ethics. In this way, I make a case for the fool, the clown, and the comic, emphasizing the ethical importance of theatrical fooling.

It is not an easy task to understand the nature of carnival as it is shown by the many failures of the last century after Mikhail Bakhtin’s work became generally known. My book is an attempt to define carnival in relation to another entity that is always and necessarily associated with the carnival, still, easier to identify. The “Clown or Fool par excellence” embodies the carnival’s topsy-turvy attitude and transgresses all borders of reason and social order. Moreover, her repeated jumps to recover bear ritual laughter mocking the figure of Death. This is how the phenomenology of the clown par excellence and the carnival are ontologically related to each other. But, parallel to the strange fate of the clown “on stage” the carnival can become problematic as well. This is clearly visible in the Early Modern theatre of Shakespeare. The resentful exit of Malvolio leaves us confused in Twelfth Night. When the Fool disappears, others have to take on in the stormy night of King Lear. While the gravedigger and his friend, in Hamlet, are mockingly clowning, the grounds spits back a skull that already whispers: “God is dead.” This is how in Shakespeare’s plays the “decarnivalization of the world” is present on the Early Modern stage. I discuss and develop the concept of decarnivalization in order to reinterpret Shakespeare’s dramatic art.

1 szekspirowski Błazen po polsku W dramatach Williama Szekspira z okresu wczesnej i późnej twórczości czytelnik napotyka całe spectrum postaci, które są utożsamiane z groteską, satyrą oraz ze śmiechem. Od prostaka w Zimowej opowieści przez barmana burdelu w Miarce za miarkę aż po błyskotliwego licencjonowanego błazna w Jak wam się podoba czy we Wszystko dobre, co się dobrze kończy. Spośród wymienionych bohaterów to ten ostatni zajmuje specjalne miejsce w utworach dramaturga.

I saggi del volume si richiamano al concetto di ironia; ma è ironia compenetrata con una «pena» profonda e cosciente, come si riscontra nel saltimbanco palazzeschiano, nell’artista dello sberleffo (anche nel dizionario ungarettiano, «ironia» sarà termine del tutto simmetrico a quello di «malinconia»); l’ironia, coscienza di sproporzione degli eventi rispetto a scopi e attese umane, risulta un concetto non contraddittorio con la tragica esperienza d’una guerra planetaria e può formare il sintagma, tutt’altro che antinomico, di «guerra ironica»: «pare un’ironia», scrive Serra il 17 luglio 1915. Il riferimento all’«ironia di naufragi» può porsi quale una “linea guida” nello studio letterario del nostro Novecento: dalla Prima guerra mondiale, nel dialogo dissonante di Serra e Panzini, al fascismo, rivissuto da Pratolini e da Bilenchi, al dramma del «buffo», al «lettore orizzontale», Bazlen, con il suo naufragio interiore, nella conscia deriva d’un’immersione junghiano-bernhardiana e d’una profonda adesione taoista.

Rosemarie Garland Thompson created the term “the extraordinary body” to describe the figure once called monstrous and subject to both stigma and “minstrelization,” that is, forced or passive exhibition.  Early modern courts minstrelized the dwarf’s extraordinary body in ways that dramatized stigma and vulnerability, casting them in roles troping on the non-human, the soulless,  and the powerless: the edible, the animal, the child. Treated as a performing object, or dressup doll, subject to random abuse and derision, made to do stupid pet tricks and even to marry and breed for amusement, the dwarf resembles the slave. Nonetheless, court dwarfs had the potential to capitalize on their status by exhibiting themselves in various ways or by establishing affective bonds with masters and mistresses. In certain settings, at certain fleeting moments, even a doubly abjected female dwarf might act according to reasons and motives that are her own, one criterion of autonomy.  In both her specular abjection and her seeming autonomy, the dwarf oddly resembles both the courtier and the monarch who keeps her.
    This essay explores the phenomenon of mirroring between monarch and dwarf. What does this lopsided form of “dark play” reveal about the fantasies and bad dreams of power? Why do these forms of play so often mirror the crises of gender abjection to which the female monarch was vulnerable?  If these acts could raise a dwarf to confidante, they could also configure the royal diva Elizabeth as a spectacle of strangeness.  These prodigies inspired a special kind of wonder as lusus naturae, yet both are vulnerable to theatrically enforced abjection.

El fenómeno clown nos permite ver parte significativa de la importancia que el juego tiene en la vida social de los grupos populares, específicamente como una figura oblicua cuyo poder permite ejercer una reflexividad en torno a los presupuestos ideológicos de ciertos sectores sociales. A través de los payasos teatrales y actores de Comparsa la Bulla observaremos en sus experiencias performativas su particular visión de la calle, del humor en la cultura urbana popular y de la construcción de un cuerpo extra-cotidiano como arma de resistencia.

I. Renato Serra e Alfredo Panzini, l'Esame di coscienza di un letterato e il Diario sentimentale della guerra. Scambio testuale, dialogo abbozzato, colloquio muto, fra biciclette e trincee del primo conflitto planetario […] cotesta fiumana immensa irrompente schiumante che nel giro di brevissimi anni, quasi a un colpo, per uno squarcio di dighe s'è riversata sul mondo per virtù del pallido poeta eurasiano. Renato Serra gli dèi, la morale le usanze; la favella e la legge; vedere il portato di tanti secoli di storia, di tradizione, di civiltà disparate, confluire nello stesso punto, e urtarsi con tumulto di torrenti che s'incrociano; vedere, e tirar le conseguenze di questa gran lezione, non in ragionamento e teoria, ma in sapienza pratica, in abito del corpo e disposizion della mente pronta a giudicare e a operare, come l'arco già teso è pronto allo scatto.

This paper deals with the depiction of the fool in visual art in late medieval Bohemia. Following a brief summary of the literature on the iconography of the jester or fool and the meaning of the figure in medieval culture, the paper focuses on individual and, until now, largely neglected iconographic variants occurring in the Bohemian Lands. Their meaning can be revealed by a comparison with analogies abroad. This is the case with the figure of a vainglorious man depicted in a wall painting of the Last Judgment in the Church of St James in Srbeč. One of the attributes of this man is a large spoon that has a double meaning in German, pointing out his stupidity. Another example is a relief in the Lapidarium of the National Museum that was found in Brandýs nad Labem. It does not, as was supposed in earlier literature, show a hunter with his dog; instead, it portrays a half-naked foolexhibitionist. A similar explanation relates to the jester with exposed genitalia that appears on a stove tile found in Brno. The figure of the fool played an essential role in the depiction of some distinctive iconographic themes, such as the portrayal of the Morris dance. This theme is evoked in three weathered statues known as the ‘dancers’ on the parapet of the Church of St Barbara in Kutná Hora. Such sculptural decoration on an important Utraquist church makes sense with regard to the moral meaning of the Morris dance, which demonstrates the foolishness of physical love. As well as individual iconographic types of folly, the paper also focuses on the portrayal of fools in the context of other scenes. The presence of a ‘commentary’ fool can often change the meaning of an image or draw attention to inconsistencies in the depiction of the main motif. On the altar of St. James in Most, the fool thus draws attention to a miracle; in the group of corbels from Hrádek in Kutná Hora, he probably refers to the neighbouring ill-matched couple. A complex use of the motif is demonstrated in the intricately composed hunting scene in the Green Chamber in Žirovnice, where the two fools portrayed on the margin of the scene confirm the allegorical subtext.

This dissertation will ask whether the Scottish natural fool had a vital relationship with Stewart rulers because of their neurodiversity and will prove they had a vital yet changing dynamic during the period. The unique nature of the Scottish fool will be revealed as each chapter reconstructs the lives of neurodiverse natural fools like Thomas Nornee and La Jardiniere in Scotland then Britain between 1488 and 1649. Following a methodology inspired by figures like Irina Metzler and C.F Goodey, it will acknowledge that disability is not transhistorical but instead defined by its specific time and place, using such work alongside thorough primary research to create a historically sensitive framework for revealing the Scottish fool. The first chapter will thus analyse the contemporary understandings of neurodiversity and folly that allowed these neurodiverse figures to occupy socially acknowledged roles as court fools.

The scholarship of Donna Haraway conducts a searing polemic against essentialist theorizing in feminist and gender studies by relying upon a novel methodology, which neither rejects the trappings of a culture addicted to technoscience, nor embraces them tout court; but, rather, inhabits said positions critically through irony, hyperbole, and iconoclasm. This approach is christened here as hypercommandeering: a neologism combining the hyper affinity of surplus, decadence, and overproduction in postmodernity with the blitzkrieg political connotations of commandeering necessary to survive in such a context. As such, this project dances and swerves between and among tropes insofar as, given the underlying trickster ontology, exaggerating and inverting meaning reveals more of the truth than a linear argument, which belies an assumed metalanguage and is therefore imperialistic. This is a path of generativity, not of final ends - of being able to speak all possible languages through the methodology’s heteroglossia from which it derives a political stance of neither anarchism nor imperialism, but of a Janus head. Trickster strategies can flank the iron curtain of metonymy and breach it through artifice. An example of hypercommandeering is given via a reading of the avant-garde fashion designer Alexander McQueen’s 2001 spring / summer show VOSS.

Summary. Death and  Jester. On the Death and Life of the Jesters: Hans Mieske (circa 1540-1619) and Michael Neuber (1596-1648).
The ritual of dying and the funeral rites of a court jester are a special case of curt ceremonies. An insight into tchem, as well as the theological, pastoral and social problem that were caused by the jesters' deaths, is possible thanks to funeral seremons (Leichenpredigten). Two such seremons have been analysed: the one at the funeral of Hans Mieske (circa 1540-1619), who was a member of the court of Philip II and Francis I, the Szczecin Dukes, and the other at the funeral of Michael Neuber (1596-1648), born in Myślibórz and a member of the court of the Saxon Dukes from Altenburg. The rituals accompanying the dying of jesters, describet by the Reverend Philip Cradelis and the Reverend Martin Caselius, are examples of the ceremonies of rites de passage. A special attention was paid to the rites concerning the preparations of the jesters for their last moments, as well as their position in the socjety, which emerges from the analysed sources, especially in the context of the efforts undertaken by Duke Francis to commemorate his jester Mieszko (Mieske) through a ceremonial funeral in a church, which ended up in confict with Szczecin inhabitants.

Resumen En este artículo analizo las prácticas políticas de resistencia que una " brigada " francesa de payasos ponen en marcha a través de la risa y el juego. Acciones, stages, entrenamientos, manifestaciones, reuniones y entrevistas constituyen el terreno experiencial que fundamenta el cuerpo de este texto. Atendiendo al contexto actual de los movimientos sociales, trato de establecer una relación entre las prácticas locales de la brigada y una narrativa transnacional de prácticas movimentísticas. Hablaré del humor como forma de lenguaje y herramienta política, tratando de vincular el oficio del etnógrafo y el arte del clown. Abstract In this article I will analyze the political practices of resistance played by a French " clown army " by the way of laugh and play. Actions, training sessions, demonstrations, meetings and interviews will be the main fieldwork to comment in these lines. By focusing on grassroots globalization I will try to establish several connections between local practices and transnational global movement. More specifically, I will talk about humor as language and political form, and I will explain the similarities between ethnographical fieldwork and clown art. Palabras clave: nuevos movimientos sociales, " ejército de payasos " , globalización, resistencia, humor.

'If ignorance is bliss, ..., 'Sirrah, the whip! (King Lear), "A fool for Christ's sake," David's feigning of madness in the presence of Abimelech, one could go on, but I trust a point has been made. There is a place for the jester, fool, clown and the Carnivaleque, which according to M. M. Bakhtin bursts into the domain of literature and general culture, with regenerative effect, challenging the rules of conformity and the prevailing establishment. As they say in Cologne one has to challenge "den tierischen Ernst' (Brutish seriousness) now and again. To continue in this strain, in diesem Sinne weiter I append .Excerpts from FROM PASTICHE TO POT POURRI A Selection of Some of My More Zany Stories, Essays, Poems and Other Writings with Visual Material Added
Default: https://books.google.co.il/books?id=-UioDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA12&lpg=PA12&dq=julian%20scutts%20diary%20of%20madman&source=bl&ots=cp0UH0pWnw&sig=ACfU3U16SX4oeaGFD8RYPx18KvQ5viP5Ew&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi3mfaE8rDsAhXB6aQKHRZ1DaYQ6AEwEXoECAgQAg&fbclid=IwAR1hhXmYvL9xGxVniHytyp4ysWvfgN8iXGTd2XtdtG7Hx_5MMHXA6yK40qM#v=onepage&q=julian%20scutts%20diary%20of%20madman&f=false

Europe. 2 Two classical stories known in the Middle Ages can serve to locate the center of the spectrum of riddle contests. Both end in failure to solve a riddle. In one, the poet Homer dies because he can't solve a riddle posed to him by some fisher boys: "We have what we did not find; what we did find we left behind." 3 Similarly, in a contest between the Greek soothsayers Calchas and Mopsus, Calchas dies for shame when he cannot say how many apples are on a certain tree. 4 More famously, Oedipus succeeds in solving the riddle of the Sphinx, but his story is the kind in which the riddle challenge leads to a more serious game that begins when the challenge seems done. 5 The Sphinx's riddle itself exemplifies enigmas that are far from random but rather gain resonance within a larger story, such as Oedipus's tragic self-discovery. These classical stories imply that even a master of the game, whether he answers well or not, will in the end be mastered by it.

La recente edizione di sermoni valdesi tardomedievali 1 curata da Andrea Giraudo, sotto la direzione di Luciana Borghi Cedrini, induce pressoché inevitabilmente ad interrogarsi sulle forme di predicazione attestate nelle origini e nelle primissime generazioni del movimento valdese. A custodire quella che potrebbe essere considerata la più antica pubblica predicazione valdese, in quanto attribuita allo stesso fondatore Valdo di Lione 2 , è il Chronicon Universale dell'anonimo di Laon. Nelle seguenti pagine ci si propone, dunque, di disaminare tale fonte, scegliendo come specifico e doppio punto d'osservazione tanto le parole pubbliche quanto la fisionomia di predicatore che tale testo ascrive a Valdo.

Abstract
Paper -a:
During the Middle Ages, the Church openly kept a hostile attitude to the social category of jesters. The disapproval was of a moral kind, since the Church recognized that jesters were the essence of perdition, corruption of morals, and earthly frivolity. In the ecclesiastical sources the jester is defined turpis, that is misshapen. His deformity is both physical and moral: it refers not only to the alteration of jester's physique due to the unnatural gesticulating he made during the shows, but also to his moral degradation that lowered him to the level of beasts. The jester was subhuman, so that he could not even be enumerated among sinners, who kept the hope of redemption. On the contrary, he was barred from any possibility of salvation. Between the 12th and 13th centuries, poor jesters became protagonists of miracles involving statues and images of the Virgin, like the famous Notre-Dame de Rocamadour and also the Volto Santo of Lucca, one of the best known christological images of the West. 'Jester's miracles' were very popular, both in literature and figurative arts, through late medieval Europe and became the paradigm of the social revenge of the entire category. The analogies between these tales invite a comparative study, since they reveal the real importance of jesters in medieval society.

Originally published as The Stations of the Fool (journal article , Comedy Studies Journal, Taylor and Francis, Oct 2017,)this is an attempt to develop Victor Turner's formulation of liminality into a dramaturgic method relating to studies of clowning and fooling. It offers as a tool a spectrum of engagement through a set of defined relationships with an audience, reconnecting the discussion of Fooling as a concrete activity rather than a set of imposed symbolic attributes.

Der Tagungsband  Über den Clown kombiniert kulturhistorische Texte mit  Berichten und Interviews zum Thema ‚Clown‘, in denen berühmte Clowninnen und Clowns aus ihrer Praxis berichten. Das Buch zeigt diese vielschichtige Figur mit der „kleinsten Maske der Welt“ (S.14) in verschie
denen kulturellen, künstlerischen und historischen Kontexten und Räumen.
Herausgeber Richard Weihe verwendet den Terminus ‚Clown‘ als Sammelbegriff für „Spaßmacher, Gaukler, Schelm, Hofnarr, Trickster, Zanni, Comico, Bouffon, Tramp, Zirkuskunstfigur“ (S.265). Vom Theater kommend wurde der Clown lange mit dem Zirkus assoziiert, um sich dann ab Mitte des 20. Jahrhunderts auch in den populären Medien Comic, Film und TV wiederzufinden. Etymologisch ist der Clown
ein ungehobelter Landbewohner, der in der Stadt lächerlich auffällt.

This essay takes the antics of ritual clowns, koyong, as an entry point into the ways in which rural Mapuche people in southern Chile come to under- stand and reflect upon the inevitability of urban migration and the “becoming white” which this migration is said to imply. Utilizing both my own ethnographic data and comparative data from elsewhere in the Americas, I explore the striking continuities in the associations of indigenous ritual clowns: associations with poverty, with uncontrolled bodily desires, with dual ritual performances, and perhaps most significantly, with white people. I suggest that the moral indictment of the “becoming white” instantiated by clowns in their ritual performances emerges from their identities as people who in everyday life are denigrated as “too Mapuche.” Thus, far from being yet another example of indigenous people’s “agency” in mimetically co-opting the vitality of white others, I suggest that clowns are one of the means by which rural Mapuche people come to understand precisely their own lack of agency in the face of Chilean colonialism

Reborned public clowning trend spread in different European countries, even though it started in the U.S. in August 2016. While some people consider it as a part of humour, a worldwide prank, there seems to be fear for others. Public disturbation grew with increased dose of violence. There has been even a question asked to the White House by press. A variaty of social stratifications such as class, gender, race are researched to observe societies and used to formulate strong theories. While this was happening, some few social scientist focused on crumbs in everyday life. In this study, one of those crumbs, clowning as a socio political act of humour or fear and most importantly its’ use as fantasy will be observed to understand current scary public clowning performances.

“Camminare a testa in giù” in un mondo che punta all’arrivismo e all’autoaffermazione significa riscoprire l’umiltà e l’eironeia socratica per arrivare allo sviluppo dell’intelligenza emotiva e al benessere che deriva dalla scoperta delle piccole cose. Il clown, con la sua attitudine a guardare il mondo con occhi nuovi e a ridisegnarlo con le sue capacità creative, è da sempre un dissacratore dei valori dominanti e il suo metodo di lavoro su se stesso può diventare uno strumento importante di crescita psicologica.
Il volume racconta la figura artistica del clown partendo da un breve excursus storico sulle origini lontane di una maschera che, uscita dal circo, ha oggi assunto tante connotazioni diverse nell’ambito del teatro e del cinema, e ne illustra le potenzialità nel campo della formazione. Infatti, ben lungi dall’accogliere l’accezione comune di clownterapia, questo libro mette in evidenza come la clownerie sia usata in situazioni di disagio sociale per restituire un’identità positiva a chi, per differenti motivi, l’ha perduta: attraverso le esperienze realizzate in diversi ambiti del sociale e dell’educazione, si dimostra che quello del clown è un metodo molto particolare, che “ribalta” i termini tradizionali della relazione insegnante-allievo o educatore-educando.

Indice:
Presentazione. La mia pedagogia si specchia in Pinocchio e in Miloud
Prefazione
1. Clown di ieri, clown di oggi
2. Il clown: un artista molto particolare
3. Il clown in ospedale
4. Il clown al servizio della persona. Storie di clown impegnati nel sociale
5. Psicologia e clowning
6. Clowning e formazione
Bibliografia
Filmografia
Sitografia

Nota sul Curatore
Alessandra Farneti è professore ordinario presso la Libera Università di Bolzano, insegna Psicologia dello Sviluppo presso la Facoltà di Scienze della Formazione. Da anni si interessa della formazione del clown al servizio della persona. Ha diretto due corsi di alta formazione dell' Università di Bologna denominati “Il clown al servizio della persona”. Ha scritto un testo e diversi articoli sul tema.

The Shiji 史記 chapter "Guji liezhuan" offers a collection of oral forms and practices that remind readers of the performed oral culture from pre-Han and Han times. Language games, storytelling, songs, rhymed speeches, informal fu 賦, as well as various modes of acting and expression contributed to the "smooth eloquence" of guji performances that succeeded in indirect remonstrance through the paired actions of facilitating 滑 and stopping 稽. In their own ways, these anecdotes also remind us of possible connections and dynamics between performance and its textual recounting, between oral culture and its written records.

La publication du Portrait de l'artiste en saltimbanque, de Jean Starobinski, a mis en lumière un thème cultivé par les artistes depuis le Romantisme : le saltimbanque sert à attaquer l'honorabilité bourgeoise, en même temps qu'il figure le double grimaçant du créateur. L'attention de Starobinski s'est surtout focalisée sur les arts plastiques. Mais un univers avait échappé à l'attention des critiques : c'est celui de la littérature et, plus précisément, du roman. Sa richesse égale sans aucun doute l'importance des témoignages iconographiques, qu'il accompagne et qu'il complète. Car les romanciers, souvent amis des peintres fascinés par le cirque, furent autant qu'eux sensibles à la magie de la piste. Comme l'indique l'exemple de Gustave Kahn et de Gustave Coquiot (les premiers admirateurs, respectivement, de Seurat et de Picasso), le regard des artistes et celui des écrivains se conjuguent au point d'apparaître souvent indissociables. Remettre en lumière les plus beaux de ces romans revient donc à restaurer l'ensemble d'une sensibilité esthétique, qui connut son apogée entre la proclamation de la Troisième République et la Première Guerre mondiale. Depuis le Romantisme, les poètes affirment leur prédilection pour les saltimbanques, en qui ils reconnaissent leur double : Banville, Nerval, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Laforgue, Apollinaire, hantent les cirques et les fêtes foraines. Mais c'est entre les deux guerres de 1870 et 1914 que le cirque, comme tous les lieux de plaisir, devient un véritable objet de fiction.
Ce volume restaure l'ensemble d'une sensibilité esthétique : celle qui régna au début de la Troisième République, encore fiévreuse du désastre de Sedan et décidée à s'étourdir, dans Paris vaincu mais qui reste la capitale du cirque. Toutes les écoles littéraires se donnent rendez-vous autour de la piste pour encenser une représentation qui ne ressemble à aucune autre, et surtout pas au théâtre : entraînés par les déclarations de Théophile Gautier, des frères Goncourt, de Barbey d'Aurevilly, de Zola, de Mallarmé, les écrivains glorifient l'authenticité du cirque, ce lieu où les acteurs ne trichent pas et où la médiocrité se solde par la mort.
L'ouvrage est précédé d'une longue introduction sur la présence du cirque dans la littérature depuis le Romantisme, suivie d'une chronologie mettant en rapport, année par année de 1870 à 1914, les principaux événements du cirque avec les événements historiques et artistiques. Chaque roman est entièrement annoté et précédé d'une analyse spécifique. L'ouvrage comprend un index des noms de personnes.

Podemos decir que en el Medioevo hubo un teatro sin teatros, es decir, una actividad espectacular no codificada que no tuvo un edificio específico para mostrarse y que, por lo tanto, pudo emerger en cualquier parte. En ausencia de un teatro en sentido fuerte como el de la Antigüedad Clásica o del Renacimiento, los historiadores del espectáculo hemos adiestrado nuestro olfato a detectar las huellas de teatralidad, por mínimas que sean, que emergen en la documentación medieval, de forma directa o indirecta y en los más variados formatos (documentos escritos, gráficos, constructivos). En los últimos años me he dedicado al análisis del teatro (particularmente de la época tardo-medieval) a través de la iconografía (Massip, "El análisis"), una metodología que he aplicado al estudio de la escenotecnia y maquinaria teatral (Massip, La ilusión), al estudio del teatro del poder real (Massip, La monarquía) o del espectáculo de tipo macabro (Massip/Kovács). En el presente ensayo quisiera aportar una interpretación de algunas muestras plásticas que podrían responder a unos tipos de celebraciones vinculadas a las fiestas invernales del cambio de año, bien enraízadas en Europa al menos desde época tardo-romana, que comportaban juegos de juglares en los templos y obispillos y reyezuelos de broma en las calles.

Robert Wilson's The Three Ladies of London offered its first audiences entertaining stereotypes of 'naturally' vicious southerners who corrupt the vulnerable English with lechery, greed, papistry, and love of foreign luxuries. The only word-mangling clown in the play is the Italian merchant Mercadorus, whose total sexual abasement to Lady Lucre renders him absurd and effeminized. His double-dealings with the Jewish moneylender Gerontus have drawn a great deal of critical attention, but this essay will examine the Italian sex comedy that Wilson uses to leaven his far more solemn-minded plot. Wilson deploys a typical commedia dell'arte character system. In some arte plots a Venetian courtesan toys with, tricks, and robs the lovesick merchant Pantalone, whose low Venetian dialect render his attempts at love-talk and eloquence laughable. Mercadorus's vows to 'Madonna' Lucre bear a distinct echo of Pantalone's romantic and linguistic excesses, a sample of which reached print in the comic letters of the clown-author Andrea Calmo.

Curator | Josef-Hegenbarth-Archiv, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (May 30th, 2021 - April 24, 2022).

Inspired by the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden's annual theme "Loneliness and Empathy", the exhibition in the Josef-Hegenbarth-Archive focuses on the fool. He makes us laugh, not only at the jokes and pranks he makes to amuse and pass the time, but also because he holds up a mirror to our own inadequacies.
The fool embodies freedom and imperfection as well as disobedience. He triggers longings for an unadjusted view of the world. In this respect, he is intimately connected to his counterpart, helping us overcome loneliness, encouraging reflection, allowing us to empathise and understand ourselves and each other.
The exhibition starts with Hegenbarth's illustrations of Till Eulenspiegel and Don Quixote. These are juxtaposed with depictions of jesters and fools from the 16th century until today from the holdings of the Kupferstich-Kabinett, the Schenkung Sammlung Hoffmann and the Archiv der Avantgarden.
Works by Francisco de Goya, Joseph Beuys, Charlie Chaplin, Pablo Picasso and others, as well as works by young artists Alexander Endrullat and Diana Ludzay, both graduates of the Dresden University of Fine Arts, illustrate the fascination, abundance and validity of the fool as a topic until today.

En évoquant le milieu du cirque à Liège au milieu du XIXe siècle, Xavier De Reul (1830-1895), géologue et romancier), décrit et dénonce à la fois, dans un style "coruscant", les sévices dont les forains sont victimes et le mépris qui les accable injustement.