ABSTRACT
In The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M.M. Bakhtin, edited by Michael Holquist, we find discussions of the role of the fool, along with the roles of the rogue and the clown, all of whom played roles in the development of the European novel. Everything these characters do must be interpreted metaphorically because their actions function as critiques of the societies in which they find themselves. As Bakhtin explains (1981:161):
Opposed to convention and functioning as a force for exposing it, we have the level-headed, cheery and clever wit of the rogue…the parodied taunts of the clown and the simpleminded incomprehension of the fool. Opposed to ponderous and gloomy deception we have the rogue’s cheerful deceit, opposed to greedy falsehood and hypocrisy we have the fool’s unselfish simplicity and his healthy failure to understand; opposed to everything that is conventional and false, we have the clown—a sympathetic form for the (parodied) exposure of others.
