The Fool

myth:the_fool

The fool and the jester: the licensed truth-teller, the one creature allowed to mock the king to his face, who speaks wisdom in the guise of nonsense. Shakespeare's Feste and the Fool of Lear are wiser than the masters they serve; and the trickster — Nasreddin on his backwards donkey, Hermes, Coyote — is the fool's own mythic kin. The folly that is permitted, alone, to be true. — comparative literature