Modern Tragicomedy and the

Faye Ran

The tragicomic mode of literary discourse has become more prominent in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries than at any other time in Western literary history. Modern tragicomedy consists of four defining categories: an inconclusive double perspective, one lacking resolution, reconciliation or reconstitution; contradictory or ambivalent mood and effect; a problematic and often protean protagonist; and the incorporation of destabilising and non-naturalistic literary modes or strategies such as surrealism, absurdity, fantasy and the grotesque. The dualistic nature of tragicomic creation, perception and reflection has led to a whole new sense of character – a new type of protagonist or . These new protagonists reject the notion of reality as a closed system with finite possibilities. Theirs is a prismatic reflection of the rational and irrational, the mundane and the transcendental, the normative and the anomalous. The ubiquitous presence of the fool in tragicomedy exemplifies our modern penchant for dialectical subversiveness and multifaceted indeterminacy. In twentieth and twenty-first century tragicomic drama, film and literature, writers, dramatists and filmmakers invariable choose antinomian protagonists – descendents and amalgams of fools, and madmen to embody their explorations of the universal and tragicomic encounter of self and society. In discussing the fool as an , we will come to a deeper understanding of the role of the fool in popular culture, the way in which historical anti-types have become modern and postmodern prototypes, and why the presence of a fool character in modern literature immediately locates us in the realm of the tragicomic. There is a proverb: “God loves fools; otherwise why would he have made so many?” Fool figures run the gamut from idiot-saints to sage-fools, to inspired and uninspired madmen; devilish rogues and bedevilled , half- wits and whole wits; , clowns, conjurers, butts and buffers, to the surprised and seemingly rational persons which we think we are. (Aren’t we?) Indeed, fool figures are persistently evident in world drama, literature and most recently film. Fools and fool variants may be regarded as pivotal to the comprehension of twentieth century tragicomedies because, as protagonists, fools embody opposing principles and values. The fool in twentieth century drama, film and literature is emblematic of rebellion, protean passions and problematic perceptions which thematically dovetail into a tragicomic perspective of the human condition and existential malaise. The fool’s philosophic “modernity” should not, however, obscure the fact that fool behaviours are based on antecedent traditions and patterns of subversion. 26 Modern Tragicomedy and the Fool ______No definite “terminus a quo” has been established in the history of the fool figure. The fool may have originally been a village idiot, a natural fool to whom magical powers were attributed, a prophetic madman, a biological anomaly, like the first known court fool, a pygmy in the court of Dadkeri-Assi, a Pharaoh of the Fifth Dynasty, or an iconoclastic pariah. Yet, despite successive transformations in person, custom and context, fool characters are readily identifiable by their iconoclastic presence, a presence which Enid Welsford, in The Fool, His Social and Literary History, has aptly described as one which “dissolves events, evades issues and throws doubt on the finality of fact.”1 The derivation of the word “fool” is the Latin “follis,” meaning a pair of bellows expelling empty air; extended to persons, it implies insubstantial thought, and applied to phenomena casts doubt on the “finality” and even the “reality” of fact. Perhaps the prevalence of the fool may be accounted for through its definition as a type of person who is both ridiculous and inferior, one who represents the failure, and consequences of failure, of the individual who does not internalise or function according to given social values and standards:

[...] fool making is a continual social process; it is safe to say that every group must have a fool [...] the fool represents values which are rejected by the group; causes that are lost, incompetence, failure and fiasco. So that, in a sense, fool-making might be called a process of history.2

Often portrayals of fool figures include detailed descriptions of physical uniqueness or deformity and psychic or behavioural deviation. Fools, in all contexts and varieties, are viewed as characters who inevitably “violate the human image” and come to a “modus vivendi with society by making a show of that violation.”3 Fools have often been singled out for their contrary behaviours. For example, among the American Plains Indians we find ceremonial buffoons and shamans chosen to provide entertainment, revelation, or both. Contrary behaviours also took the form of scatological clowning, satiric policing and mock war-games. Modern fools, unlike the Cheyenne contraries, rarely revert to normal behaviour, altruistic, or otherwise. They remain conspicuously devoted to their anti-heroic behaviour. Although the origins and developments of the fool have been comprehensively studied4 and described, it nonetheless remains appropriate in the course of our discussion to cull and summarise the characteristics of the fool, whenever and in whatever generic context he or she appears. A composite picture of the fool figure as an archetypal constellation will then emerge. The fool’s archetypal configuration consists of the following five aspects: