“Worthless Idiot, Donkey Head”: Parodies of Pedantry on the Renaissance Stage

According to the Public Domain Review, Renaissance theater in Italy mocked pompous scholars through a stock character called the pedant — embodying false erudition and social pretension. Scholar Arnoud Visser explores how these plays targeted humanist pretense, using ridicule to deflate the vanity of know-it-alls claiming superior learning and status.

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