Ivan the Fool

This article relies largely or entirely on a single source. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. Please help improve this article by introducing citations to additional sources. Find sources: "Ivan the Fool" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (March 2015)

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Russian. (August 2023) Click [show] for important translation instructions. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 986 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Russian Wikipedia article at [[:ru:Иван-дурак]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|ru|Иван-дурак}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Ivan the Fool (Russian: Иван-дурак, romanized: Ivan-durak, diminutive: Иванушка-дурачок) or Ivan the Ninny is a lucky fool stock character who appears in Russian folklore, a very simple-minded, but, nevertheless, lucky young man. Ivan is described as a likeable, fair-haired and blue-eyed youth.

The approximate setting of Ivan the Fool's adventures is 15th- or 16th-century Russia.

Ivan the Fool usually appears in stories either as a peasant or as the son of a poor family. He is usually the youngest of three brothers; his older siblings appear much smarter than he, but are sometimes unkind to and envious of him.

In contrast to typical heroes, Ivan's simplicity and lack of guile turn out to help him in his adventures. For example, he listens to his heart rather than to his mind, and he easily forgets offence and endeavors to help others even at his own expense. His naivety, kindness, and daring help him fight villains, make friends, and win princesses' hearts, and ultimately he is rewarded with half a kingdom or some similar accomplishment.

The moral of these stories is that Ivan the Fool is rarely the fool, but is merely perceived as such by others owing to his simple nature and joviality. According to one theory, Ivan the Fool as originally created was not intended to be a fool at all: at that time the Russian word дурак (durak, currently meaning "fool") did not have any negative connotation, and was used to refer to the youngest son in the family.^{[citation needed]} It was only later that it obtained a new meaning, from which the ambiguity arose.

Andrey Sinyavsky remarks that Ivan the Fool is a positive character in all tales which mention him.^[1]

• Ivan Tsarevich
• Jack (hero)
• Ivan the Fool, a short story by Leo Tolstoy (1886)
• Honza

This article relating to a European folklore is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

• v
• t
• e