From the self-abasements of Charlie Chaplin and Lenny Bruce''s provocations to the present-day culture warring over figures like Dave Chappelle and Hannah Gadsby, comedians have always been not simply entertainers, but charismatic observers of (and participants in) social anxieties and pathologies. Performers as varied as Mort Sahl, Richard Pryor, Margaret Cho, and Louis CK have courted both devotion and outrage at various points in their careers, as they cavort at the outer extremities of taboo, good taste, and received opinion. In God''s Fools: Laughing Saints, Delirious Prophets, and the Sacred Makers of Comedy religion and literature scholar Jason Crawford gives a penetrating and surprising look at the social role that comedians play by placing them in their proper historical lineage-one that begins not with vaudeville and minstrelsy but with the mystics, martyrs, and misfits of the premodern Judeo-Christian world. In Crawford''s expansive account, comedians like Chaplin and Chappelle mingle with such motley historical figures as St. Francis of Assisi, the first-century rabbi Akiba, and the Shakespearean collaborator Robert Armin. In lively and memorable character sketches, Crawford reveals the compelling through-lines that connect these figures to modern comedians, showing how, they attract devotion as exemplars of bad behavior-of a shabbiness transfigured by mystical insight-and act as lightning rods for rejection and punishment during times of deep cultural division.

Autorentext

Jason Crawford is Professor of English at Union University. His book Allegory and Enchantment was published by Oxford University Press in 2017, and his essays have appeared in publications such as ELH, The Cresset, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. He earned his graduate degrees at Harvard and has been a research fellow at Oxford University, at the Huntington Library, and at the University of Tennessee's Marco Institute. He lives in Tennessee with four funny people and one funny dog.

Klappentext

Comedians play a complicated role in modern culture. They get up on public stages to talk about nothing in particular, with no expertise. They go out of their way to put their flaws, failures, and shabbiness on display. They break social taboos and orchestrate their own persecution. And through it all, they seem to be touched with a kind of spiritual charisma. Sometimes they seem like prophets, speaking truths that no one else would dare. Sometimes they seem like children, wide-eyed and innocent. We can't stop listening to what they have to say.

In God's Fools, Jason Crawford tells the stories of these strange figures. He ranges over a motley crew of modern comedians, from the pioneers of early cinema to the provocateurs of contemporary stand-up. But he also follows the story of the comedian further back, into a surprising history of holy fools, wild prophets, and mischief-making saints. In his account, comic performers from Charlie Chaplin to the present mingle with older figures like Francis of Assisi, Symeon the Fool, the laughing martyrs Perpetua, Lawrence, and Akiva, and the weird hermit Thecla of Iconium. As he uncovers the through-lines that connect these ancient lives to the world of modern comedy, Crawford asks how comedians still fashion themselves as prophetic and sacred characters. He explores the things comedy shares with sacred experience: how jokes are like prophecies, and how comic resolutions are like apocalyptic visions. And he finds new ways of understanding the power of comedy in our own moment.

Inhalt

Introduction: What is a Comedian?
I. SAINTS

1. The Patron Saint of Laughter: Francis of Assisi
2. Unlucky Winners: from an Orphan Queen to an Awkward Black Girl
   II. PROPHETS
   Interlude: A Joke is a Prophecy
3. The Prophet in Agony: from Snuff the Clown to Shakespeare's Fool
4. The Prophet Confesses: Richard Pryor
   III. MARTYRS
   Interlude: Comedy is a Carnival
5. Hilarious Martyrs: from Perpetua of Carthage to Lawrence of Rome
6. Holy Fools: from Thecla in the Desert to Symeon in the City
   IV. INNOCENTS
   Interlude: Rites of Renewal
7. The Child Everlasting: Charlie Chaplin
8. Apocalyptic Comedy

Acknowledgments
Notes
Index