Court fools are often thought to have vanished by the eighteenth century, but Dorinda Outram shows that in German courts, fools survived all through this century. As stories about fools often are, this gem of a book is both delightful and dark. Outram's protagonists—Jacob Paul Gundling, Salomon Jacob Morgenstern, Joseph Fröhlich, and Peter Prosch—form an intriguing quartet in many ways. They were all outsiders, diverting the insiders of German courts but never quite fitting in, desired for their entertainment value but simultaneously dishonored and controlled through ridicule. Yet the fools of this book were also interesting and complex individuals, and Outram does a valuable job in bringing them to light. Embracing their foolish paradoxes of learning, Outram suspects herself of folly too, but her book offers more thoughtful reading than most intellectual products of foolery.

Outram is particularly skilful in contextualizing the fools and their exploits against the struggles, whether social or ideological, that characterize the Enlightenment and the history of the German states at the time. One of the book's thoughtful contributions, seldom attempted in studies of fools, is to problematize the court in relation to court fools: What did it mean for fools to reside at the margins of court life, and how should we view the social and political dynamics of eighteenth-century German courts through the lens of the fool? Fools functioned as a buffer between the sovereign and his court. Outram shows deftly how the shaming of the fool worked to tighten group loyalties among other members of the court, and how that in turn solidified the ruler's grip on power. The fools benefited the kings’ agenda in other ways too, functioning as intermediaries in their questioning the power of universities, for example.

As one can expect from an intellectual historian of Outram's stature, the analysis of the political and philosophical aspects of the fools’ performances is insightful and inspiring. The laughable protagonists help her question the nature of the Enlightenment public sphere and emphasize the role of performance and practice in its negotiations of meaning. The fools make visible the porous borders between different sorts of knowledge in this period, critiquing both theologians and philosophers through the comic logic of folly. Outram concentrates on their offices, professional activities, and positions, analyzing them against the intellectual currents and political contexts of the time.

More cultural concerns, such as gender and the body, are less prominently in focus. Although the interesting bodily or facial features of some of the fools are briefly mentioned, Outram gives more space to their clothes and other accoutrements and offers interesting analyses of the various kinds of symbolism in the fools’ material trappings. And yet, both in textual and visual portraits, fools seem to have had funny faces and “monkey physiognomies” (36). How central were physical features when someone was identified as a fool? The corporeality of the fool's performance is brought into focus through perceptive comments on the violence and cruelty they were routinely exposed to, and here Outram's interpretation comes close to Simon Dickie's recent work on the brutality of eighteenth-century laughter. However, Outram seems to shy away from further analysis of the scatological aspects of the fools’ language and performance. The lowly functions of the body clearly had an important role in fools’ humor, and hence perhaps some meaning also for the state-building projects of German rulers and the negotiation of Enlightenment rationality.

An especially interesting theme that Outram analyzes at length is the fools’ long-lasting and close relationship with the animal kingdom. Certain animals, such as hares, monkeys, asses, and owls, had strong associations with fooldom and could be found both as real-life companions of fools and depicted on their clothes or headgear as well as their portraits. Fools imitated animals in their performances and performed with them, and courtiers delighted in playing sometimes terrifying pranks on fools with the help of dangerous animals. The rich history of human-animal relationships in this context offers interesting insights into how humanity was questioned and tested in the period.

But why, then, did fools disappear as the eighteenth century drew to its close? Outram gives several well-considered answers. A change in taste made their physical and scatological humor outdated. Looking into the Hanswurst figure, Outram analyzes Enlightenment debates about rustic comedy and comic taste more generally. The last flourishing of folly in German lands coincides with the rise of sentimentality: the cruel and violent treatment of fools grew less entertaining when ideals of politeness and refinement gained ground with both the aristocracy and the middle classes. Animality and rationality were no longer embraced as two sides of humanity; instead, taxonomical distinctions pushed humans and animals categorically apart. Fools were no longer the Other who delighted with their difference; they started to look out of place, excessive, and irrational in ways that finally landed them on the Benjaminian rubbish heap of history.

But while exploring the last phase of foolery, Outram also rewrites the Enlightenment. Rejecting the familiarity and “modernity” of the Age of Reason, hers is a counter-image to some of the traits we tend to associate with the period. The shifting borders between folly and reason, enduring animal emblems, the centrality of oral performance, and negotiable class positions dependent on honor and patronage complicate our understanding of the Enlightenment. Outram uses them to critique one-sided historical narratives. Here, the Enlightenment is characterized by parallel chronologies and conceptual contradictions. Outram's methodological agenda, summed up at the close of the book, is to look for a way of thinking that allows radical interpretative uncertainty as a paradoxical way to probability—a program inspired by the logic of fools but also inspiring for current historians.