Fools and folly - Porter - 2002 - Article

What stigma?

In all societies, the different, deviant, and dangerous people are judged to be mad. This is called ‘stigma’, and this stigma involves viewing these others as incompetent. This need to stigmatize others is visible in all cultures over the world, and help people to reinforce their sense of self-identity and self-worth. This stigmatization legitimized the institutionalizing trend which existed from the seventeenth century.

Witty fools?

In folk wisdom, madness was seen as ‘what you see is what you get’. Thus, ‘mad’ people were described as wild men, with straw in their hairs, their clothes threadbare. Thus, they were kind of seen as fools. Now, we call these stereotypes. Some historical stereotypes of these ‘mad people’ were that of the ‘divine madness of the artist’. Plato spoke of the ‘divine fury of the poet’, and Aristoteles sketched a profile of the ‘melancholy genius’. John Evelyn spoke of an inmate ‘mad with making verses’. Thus, writers were often seen as being mad, and mad people often suffered from ‘cacoethes scribendi’, which translates to ‘the writer’s itch’. Artists in the Renaissance were told to have visions in their dreams and daydreams. On stages, they were in all black, representing melancholy.

According to Humanists, in a mad world, the only realist was the ‘fool’. Thus, madness took many forms in early modern times, ranging from moral and medical, to negative and positive, to religious and secular. Man was seen as being a part of an angel, and part of a beast. Burton declared: ‘we are all mad, we are all embodied in the double face of Bethlem Hospital, which is both a bricks-and-mortar institution on the edge of London, and an image.’

One such Bedlam situation was described in ‘The Rake’s progress’ sequence. In these scenes, Tom Rakewell drinks, gambles, whores, and marries. Later, he becomes demented and dumped in the Bethlem hospital, in which he lies naked and wrecked, and is surrounded by ‘crazy people’: a mad lover, a mad bishop, a mad king. Hogart did not intend to make people think that the Bedlamites looked like this. Instead, he tried to sketch reality, and he did not try to depict Bethlem, but Britain! In fact, he was holding up the mirror to the viewer, and he was implicitly saying: “It is us, who are mad”. Later, people started joking about mad monarchs, for example George III’s descent in 1788 was used by many satirists and cartoonists, who wanted to highlight the craziness of power. Edmund Burke was said to be the ‘most eloquent madman’.

How was folliness disinherited?

Later, the medicalization of insanity, institutionalization (locking ‘mad’ people up), made the ‘witty fool’ figure obsolete. According to Robinson, folly was no longer revealing, meaningful, or amusing. Also, Erasmian double-talk (Folly as a teacher) were no longer seen valid, because of science, which turned insanity into pathology. Also, the rise of asylum was a risk for the ‘mad poet’ to be put under lock and key. In Augustan culture, madness was still used, but then as a metaphor.

What was the relationship between madness and genius?

Thus, artists did not longer want to be seen as ‘mad’. But, geniousity was still a virtue. Also, creativity was seen as the outpouring of a healthy psyche, such as the growth and flowering of plants. Romantic poets also stated that imagination was the greatest ability of man. According to William Blake, ‘art is the tree of life’. There was a Romantic ideal of the heroic, healthy genius. Mental disorders came to be associated with other illnesses and vices (drinking, drugs). According to the avant-garde, true art arose from sickness and suffering.

According to Cesare Lombroso, an Italian, artists and writers were disturbed and in need of treatment. Freud thought of artists as being neurotic. Also, the mental breakdowns of certain artists such as Antonin Artaud, Nijinsky, Woolf, Sylvia Plath, and Anne Sexton further fuelled the mad/genius debate.

What can be said about nerves?

The stereotype of the melancholic also underwent some changes. For example, through the work of Richard Blakemore and George Cheyne, melancholy became a fashion statement. Cheyne stated that ‘English malady’ was a disorder of the elite, because of the pursuit of affluence, novelty, and elegance, and the excessive eating and drinking. This would lead to damage to the nerves. Cheyne thought that melancholic individuals try to flee from their anxieties, by engaging in art, or playing Cards. Bernard Mandeville examined this melancholy of the elites. Later, the society founded ‘nervous disorders’. However, having these disorders signalled that one was of social superiority. Thus, melancholy became fashionable.