Frits Van den Berghe - De idioot bij de vijver

The village idiot in strict terms is a person locally known for ignorance or stupidity but is also a common term for a stereotypically silly or nonsensical person or

stock character A stock character, also known as a character archetype, is a fictional character in a work of art such as a novel, play, or a film whom audiences recognize from frequent recurrences in a particular literary tradition. There is a wide range of st ...

Description

The term "village idiot" is also used as a

stereotype In social psychology, a stereotype is a generalized belief about a particular category of people. It is an expectation that people might have about every person of a particular group. The type of expectation can vary; it can be, for example ...

of the mentally disabled. It has also been applied as an

epithet An epithet (, ), also byname, is a descriptive term (word or phrase) known for accompanying or occurring in place of a name and having entered common usage. It has various shades of meaning when applied to seemingly real or fictitious people, di ...

for an unrealistically optimistic or naive individual. The village idiot was long considered an acceptable social role, a unique individual who was dependent yet contributed to the social fabric of their community. As early as

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...

times, the "village idiot" was treated as an acceptable form of disabled individual compatible with then-prevailing normative conceptions of social order. The concept of a "village savant" or "village genius" is closely related, often tied to the concept of pre-industrial

anti-intellectualism Anti-intellectualism is hostility to and mistrust of intellect, intellectuals, and intellectualism, commonly expressed as deprecation of education and philosophy and the dismissal of art, literature, and science as impractical, politically mo ...

, as both figures are subjects of both pity and derision.Dols, M.W., 1987: Insanity and its treatment in Islamic society. ''Medical History'' 31, 1-14. The social roles of the two are combined and applied, especially in the sociopolitical context, in the European medieval/Renaissance court jester.

References

Developmental disabilities Stock characters Stereotypes Social classes Slurs related to low intelligence Ignorance {{Society-stub