Humour and disability: French sixteenth-century literary portrayals of the jester Triboulet

The essay explores how two French humanist writers, Bonaventure Des Périers and François Rabelais appropriated in their literary works – respectively in Les Nouvelles Recréations et Joyeux Devis , 1558; and Le Tiers Livre , 1546 – the perceived intellectual disability of Triboulet, court jester for Louis XII (1498–1515) first and then François I (1515–1547). Des Périers’ and Rabelais’ depictions of Triboulet are different in some aspects: for example, Des Périers's depictions include witty verbal exchanges between Triboulet and his king, whereas Rabelais reduces Triboulet's speech to unintelligible gibberish, a source of confusion for interlocutors. However, both portrayals highlight Triboulet's nonsensical physical contortions and antics, and how the court received his intellectual disability: associating both empowering and disabling humour with him. In either case Triboulet's intellectual disability turns out to be a catalyst for rejecting social conventions and normative court behaviour: whether for example in wittingly warning Francis I about the challenges of maintaining control in Italy, in comically struggling with horseback riding, or in giving incoherent suggestions about marriage. Périers and Rabelais created characters inspired by Erasmus's idea of the happy fool: a fool who is also Rabelais and Des Periers’ avatar, skating dangerously between court approval and rejection.