Town of fools

Joke category
Molbos helped a shepherd to chase away a stork from the grain field while preventing shepherd's big feet from trampling the field

A town of fools is the base of a number of joke cycles found in various cultures. Jokes of these cycles poke fun at the stupidity of the inhabitants of a real or fictional populated place (village, town, region, etc.). In English folklore the best known butt of jokes of this type are the Wise Men of Gotham. A number of works of satire are set in a town of fools.

The Motif-Index of Folk-Literature includes the motif J1703: "Town (country) of fools".[1]

Archetypal fools by place of residence

  • Wise Men of Gotham hail from the village of Gotham, Nottinghamshire
  • German Schildbürger residents of fictitious – not the actual town of Schilda. Storeies about them originated from a 1597 book Das Lalebuch about the residents of a fictional town of Laleburg[2]
  • Greek residents of Abdera. The Philogelos, a Greek-language joke book compiled in the 4th century AD, has a chapter dedicated to jokes about dumb Abderans.[3]
    • Example: An Abderan sees a eunuch talking to a woman and asks whether she is his wife. The Eunuch replies that he is not able to have a wife. The man persists: "Perhaps she is your daughter?"[3]
  • Finnish residents of the fictional town of Hymylä
  • Polish Jewish Wise Men of Chelm[4]
  • Molbos (residents of Mols) famed for Molbo stories
  • Kocourkov, fictional Czech village of fools
  • Fünsing, known, e.g., from Schwanks by the 16-th century German poet and playwright Hans Sachs

Towns of fools in satire

  • Mendele Mocher Sforim set some of his stories in a fictional town of Glupsk ("Foolstown", from Russian, 'глупец' for "fool"). Dan Miron suggests[5] that its prototype may be found in a fictional town Ksalon[a], a Biblical name כְּסָלוֹן, Kesalon/Ksalon may allude to the Hebrew word kesil/ksil (כסיל), "fool",[6][7] from his story Beseter ra'am (Hebrew: בסתר רעם),[b] a satirical description of life in a shtetl in Russian Empire. Hillel Halkin gave his reasons why during his translation of Beseter ra'am he used the untranslated Hebrew name Ksalon instead of the "low hanging fruit" choice of "Foolsville".[7]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ not to be confused with real Ksalon
  2. ^ "Beseter ra'am" is a allusion to an expression in Psalms 81:7 [8] variously translated as "in the secret place of thunder", "hidden in thunder", etc.

References

  1. ^ Stith Thompson, Motif-index of folk-literature : a classification of narrative elements in folktales, ballads, myths, fables, medieval romances, exempla, fabliaux, jest-books, and local legends. J. THE WISE AND THE FOOLISH
  2. ^ Werner Wunderlich, "Schildbürgerstreiche. Bericht zur Lalebuch- und Schildbürgerforschung", In: Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte, vol. 56, 1982, pp. 641–685.
  3. ^ a b The Jests of Hierocles and Philagrius. Translated by Bubb, Charles Clinch. Cleveland: The Rowfant Club. 1920. pp. 50–55.
  4. ^ Edward Portnoy, Wise Men of Chelm, The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe
  5. ^ a b Mikhail Krutikov BERDICHEV IN RUSSIAN-JEWISH LITERACY IMAGINATION:From Israel Aksenfeld to Friedrich Gorenshteyn
  6. ^ David G. Roskies, Against the Apocalypse. Responses to Catastrophe in Modern Jewish Culture, 1999, p. 66
  7. ^ a b Hillel Halkin, "Adventures in Translating Mendele" , JSTOR 20689263
  8. ^ Psalms 81:7