“CHANGELING HUMORISTS:” THE SPEECH ACTS OF THE EARLY MODERN ENGLISH FOOL

This dissertation pushes back against traditional theories of locating the fool within the carnivalesque traditions of subversion. Instead, it examines the ways in which the fool’s speech acts create an interstitial space to revise the humanist notion of civitas and transfer sovereignty from the royal court to the people. As a staged figure and a humanist trope flitting throughout seventeenth century discourses, the early modern English fool occupies a multimodal position and uses speech acts to democratize an access to voice before the English Civil War.Doctor of Philosoph