Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores different religious and cultural traditions with various geographical spaces in which tradition functions in a number of ways. In order to interpret the figure of the holy fool in the context of the past hundred years of the cinematic age, a number of hermeneutical techniques familiar to those working in the field of film and religion is used. It considers the holy fools in the selected films in relation to their possible precursors. The book begins by reconstructing a history of holy foolishness across the European Christian world in its Eastern and Western dimensions. It highlights the countercultural thrust of the Epistle. The book presents an analysis of the biblical text that is considered foundational for the practice and theory of holy foolishness: the apostle Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians.