Persistence of Folly

Joel B. Lande's Persistence of Folly challenges the accepted account of the origins of German theater by focusing on the misunderstood figure of the fool, whose spontaneous and impish jest captivated audiences, critics, and playwrights from the late sixteenth through the early nineteenth century. Lande radically expands the scope of literary historical inquiry, showing that the fool was not a distraction from attempts to establish a serious dramatic tradition in the German language. Instead, the fool was both a fixture on the stage and a nearly ubiquitous theme in an array of literary critical, governmental, moral-philosophical, and medical discourses, figuring centrally in broad-based efforts to assign laughter a proper time, place, and proportion in society.

Persistence of Folly reveals the fool as a cornerstone of the dynamic process that culminated in the works of Lessing, Goethe, and Kleist. By reorienting the history of German theater, Lande's work conclusively shows that the highpoint of German literature around 1800 did not eliminate irreverent jest in the name of serious drama, but instead developed highly refined techniques for integrating the comic tradition of the stage fool.

Joel Lande is an Assistant Professor in the Department of German at Princeton University.

Lande's Persistence of Folly is one of the best works on German comedies in the Anglophone world in recent decades. It is an essential read for anyone interested in comedy studies and German literary history, and will appeal to scholars interested in form and genre theory as much as to scholars interested theories of performance

Lande's book is a complex and interesting investigation into the role of the comic in the development of German theatre from its popular origins in the 17th century to its 'classical' phase around 1800

More than a literary history of German comedy or a study of the figure of the fool in dramatic texts, the analyses carried out in The Persistence of Folly exemplify and point to key methodological and theoretical reorientations of broader relevance

It is the mark of a good teacher to present new knowledge in a way that inspires students to do their own thinking. Lande's book is an excellent seminar room—or traveling stage—for this kind of learning. Fittingly, he directs the fool to do this maieutic work, and the result is both entertaining and edifying

Photographic Literacy certainly offers a new way to think about the relationship between text and image in Russian modern culture. For this reason, it will doubtless be valuable not only to literary scholars and historians of photography, but also specialists in Russian cultural, social and intellectual history.

Persistence of Folly shows Lande's skill in implementing a large amount of historical and theoretical research to produce fascinating contributions to the way we read these plays. The book takes the reader on a journey along the fool's trajectory with carefully chosen examples that render his conclusions convincing and insightful, and pro- vides indispensable insights for any Goethe or Kleist scholar, or for those interested in German literary history in general.

In Persistence of Folly, Lande... provides a well-researched study of the fool in German literature from the time of the English comedians to the great Faust dramas and Heinrich von Kleist's Broken Jug.... This is a valuable resource on a significant topic.

Mark Roche, Joyce Professor of German and Concurrent Professor of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame, and author of Tragedy and Comedy:

Persistence of Folly advances an original claim about the origins of the German dramatic tradition. Scholarship in this area has been scant in recent years, and in focusing on the figure of the fool, Lande has chosen a compelling point of entry for an important new account. The research is superb.

Daniel Purdy, Professor of German Studies, Penn State, and author of On the Ruins of Babel: Architectural Metaphor in German Thought:

Persistence of Folly has a clear and entertaining line of argumentation, the reader will have no trouble enjoying its sophisticated analysis. This is an excellent book.

Mark W. Roche, Joyce Professor of German and Concurrent Professor of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame, and author of Tragedy and Comedy: A Systematic Study and a Critique of Hegel:

The quality of the work is high, the topic is well chosen, the writing is very good, the research is superb. The book does an excellent job of fleshing out the historical development of German drama, the meaning of the fool, and our understanding of two canonical works by Goethe and Kleist.