An era's culture is always exceptionally revealed in its concept and image of the idiot figure. The latter has often changed identity since appearing for the first time in the mystic texts of the 4^th century. The « idiot » as perceived by Saint Francis of Assisi is not exactly the same as the one studied by 19^th-century alienists Pinel and Esquirol, or the one reflected in the dazed expressions of some people who survived the concentrationary experience, nor even the many idiot figures who — after being yesterday's monsters — are today's motion picture stars.
This book gives readers an opportunity to follow these major mutations and understand how they have been reflected in artistic creation through the various ways in which the idiot figure continues to disrupt our relationship with ourselves, daring us to experience our individuality and intersubjectivity from an entirely new perpective.

Valérie Deshoulières is a Senior Lecturer in Comparative Literature at Université de Clermont-Ferrand II. She has written several studies on the desubjectivation experience and the adversity of knowledge in the 20^th century.