Download or read book The Trickster Figure in American Literature written by Winifred Morgan and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-10-23 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyzes and offers fresh insights into the trickster tradition including African American, American Indian, Euro-American, Asian American, and Latino/a stories, Morgan examines the oral roots of each racial/ethnic group to reveal how each group's history, frustrations, and aspirations have molded the tradition in contemporary literature.
Download or read book American Trickster written by Emily Zobel Marshall and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2019-06-18 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our fascination with the trickster figure, whose presence is global, stems from our desire to break free from the tightly regimented structures of our societies. Condemned to conform to laws and rules imposed by governments, communities, social groups and family bonds, we revel in the fantasy of the trickster whose energy and cunning knows no bounds and for whom nothing is sacred. One such trickster is Brer Rabbit, who was introduced to North America through the folktales of enslaved Africans. On the plantations, Brer Rabbit, like Anansi in the Caribbean, functioned as a resistance figure for the enslaved whose trickery was aimed at undermining and challenging the plantation regime. Yet as Brer Rabbit tales moved from the oral tradition to the printed page in the late nineteenth-century, the trickster was emptied of his potentially powerful symbolism by white American collectors, authors and folklorists in their attempt to create a nostalgic fantasy of the plantation past. American Trickster offers readers a unique insight into the cultural significance of the Brer Rabbit trickster figure, from his African roots and through to his influence on contemporary culture. Exploring the changing portrayals of the trickster figure through a wealth of cultural forms including folktales, advertising, fiction and films the book scrutinises the profound tensions between the perpetuation of damaging racial stereotypes and the need to keep African-American folk traditions alive. Emily Zobel Marshall argues that Brer Rabbit was eventually reclaimed by twentieth-century African-American novelists whose protagonists ‘trick’ their way out of limiting stereotypes, break down social and cultural boundaries and offer readers practical and psychological methods for challenging the traumatic legacies of slavery and racism.
Download or read book Trickster Lives written by Jeanne Campbell Reesman and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2001-01-01 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At once criminal and savior, clown and creator, antagonist and mediator, the character of trickster has made frequent appearances in works by writers the world over. Usually a figure both culturally specific and transcendent, trickster leads the way to the unconscious, the concealed, and the seemingly unattainable. This book offers thirteen interpretations of trickster in American writing, including essays on works by African America, Native America, Pacific Rim, and Latino writers, as well as an examination of trickster politics. This collection conveys the trickster's imprint on the modern world.
Download or read book Tricksterism in Turn of the century American Literature written by Elizabeth Ammons and published by Tufts University Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Trickster and the Troll written by Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 1999-01-01 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Iktomi, a Lakota trickster, and a troll from Norway meet and become competitors, helpers, and friends as they try to hold on to the native ways that are being abandoned as more people settle across America.
Download or read book Trickster Makes This World written by Lewis Hyde and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2010-08-17 with total page 580 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Trickster Makes This World, Lewis Hyde brings to life the playful and disruptive side of human imagination as it is embodied in trickster mythology. He first visits the old stories—Hermes in Greece, Eshu in West Africa, Krishna in India, Coyote in North America, among others—and then holds them up against the lives and work of more recent creators: Picasso, Duchamp, Ginsberg, John Cage, and Frederick Douglass. Twelve years after its first publication, Trickster Makes This World—authoritative in its scholarship, loose-limbed in its style—has taken its place among the great works of modern cultural criticism. This new edition includes an introduction by Michael Chabon.
Download or read book American Indian Trickster Tales written by Richard Erdoes and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1999-03-01 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Of all the characters in myths and legends told around the world, it's the wily trickster who provides the real spark in the action, causing trouble wherever he goes. This figure shows up time and again in Native American folklore, where he takes many forms, from the irascible Coyote of the Southwest, to Iktomi, the amorphous spider man of the Lakota tribe. This dazzling collection of American Indian trickster tales, compiled by an eminent anthropologist and a master storyteller, serves as the perfect companion to their previous masterwork, American Indian Myths and Legends. American Indian Trickster Tales includes more than one hundred stories from sixty tribes--many recorded from living storytellers—which are illustrated with lively and evocative drawings. These entertaining tales can be read aloud and enjoyed by readers of any age, and will entrance folklorists, anthropologists, lovers of Native American literature, and fans of both Joseph Campbell and the Brothers Grimm.
Download or read book Dancing on the Color Line written by Gretchen Martin and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2015-12-09 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The extensive influence of the creative traditions derived from slave culture, particularly black folklore, in the work of nineteenth- and twentieth-century black authors, such as Ralph Ellison and Toni Morrison, has become a hallmark of African American scholarship. Yet similar inquiries regarding white authors adopting black aesthetic techniques have been largely overlooked. Gretchen Martin examines representative nineteenth-century works to explore the influence of black-authored (or narrated) works on well-known white-authored texts, particularly the impact of black oral culture evident by subversive trickster figures in John Pendleton Kennedy's Swallow Barn, Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, Herman Melville's Benito Cereno, Joel Chandler Harris's short stories, as well as Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Pudd'nhead Wilson. As Martin indicates, such white authors show themselves to be savvy observers of the many trickster traditions and indeed a wide range of texts suggest stylistic and aesthetic influences representative of the artistry, subversive wisdom, and subtle humor in these black figures of ridicule, resistance, and repudiation. The black characters created by these white authors are often dismissed as little more than limited, demeaning stereotypes of the minstrel tradition, yet by teasing out important distinctions between the wisdom and humor signified by trickery rather than minstrelsy, Martin probes an overlooked aspect of the nineteenth-century American literary canon and reveals the extensive influence of black aesthetics on some of the most highly regarded work by white American authors.
Download or read book Raven written by Gerald McDermott and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2001-09-01 with total page 37 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Raven, the trickster, wants to give people the gift of light. But can he find out where Sky Chief keeps it? And if he does, will he be able to escape without being discovered? His dream seems impossible, but if anyone can find a way to bring light to the world, wise and clever Raven can!
Download or read book Mythical Trickster Figures written by William J. Hynes and published by University Alabama Press. This book was released on 1993-01-30 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mythical Trickster Figures, is the first substantial collection of essays about the trickster to appear since Radin's 1955 The Trickster. Contributions by leading scholars treat a wide range of manifestations of this mischievous character, ranging from the Coyote of the American Southwest to such African figures as Eshu-Elegba and Ananse, the Japanese Susa-no-o, the Greek Hermes, Christian adaptations of Saint Peter, and examples found in contemporary American fiction and drama. The many humorous trickster stories included are fascinating in themselves, but Hynes and Doty also highlight the wide range of features of the trickster--the figure whose comic appearance often signifies that the most serious cultural values are being both challenged and enforced. William J. Hynes is Vice President for Academic Affairs and Professor of Religious Studies at Saint Mary's College of California. William G. Doty is Professor of Religious Studies at The University of Alabama and the author of Mythography: The Study of Myths and Rituals also published by The University of Alabama Press.
Download or read book Trickster written by Matt Dembicki and published by Chicago Review Press. This book was released on 2021-05-03 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the original graphic anthology of Native American trickster tales, Trickster brings together Native American folklore and the world of comics. This inspired collaboration pairs twenty-four native storytellers with twenty-four accomplished artists, telling cultural tales from across North America.
Download or read book Trickster written by Matt Dembicki and published by Fulcrum Publishing. This book was released on 2016-07-06 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2010 Maverick Award winner, 2011 Aesop Prize Winner – Children's folklore section, and a 2011 Eisner Award Nominee. All cultures have tales of the trickster – a crafty creature or being who uses cunning to get food, steal precious possessions, or simply cause mischief. He disrupts the order of things, often humiliating others and sometimes himself. In Native American traditions, the trickster takes many forms, from coyote or rabbit to raccoon or raven. The first graphic anthology of Native American trickster tales, Trickster brings together Native American folklore and the world of comics. In Trickster, 24 Native storytellers were paired with 24 comic artists, telling cultural tales from across America. Ranging from serious and dramatic to funny and sometimes downright fiendish, these tales bring tricksters back into popular culture.
Download or read book Trickster Figures in Louise Erdrich s Love Medicine written by Jennifer Künkler and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2002-04-26 with total page 23 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2001 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0 (A), Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (Institute for English Philology), course: Proseminar: Native American Literature, language: English, abstract: Louise Erdrich’s novel Love Medicine reveals a lot about Chippewa(1) culture: it is a story of love and hate, of violence and peacefulness, of isolation and inclusion, interwoven with typical aspects of Chippewa cultural heritage and mythic elements. Within the space of her novel, she allows traditional Chippewa myths of transformation to meet, contradict and relativize each other.(2) One of the most important figures in Native American tradition is the so-called “Trickster” and it is particularly this individual Erdrich makes use of in Love Medicine in order to form her protagonists. Reading the novel as a variation of traditional Chippewa Trickster Tales, this paper makes an attempt to describe and analyze the trickster-ego in some of Erdrich’s characters. It will begin with a general description of the tricky Nanabozho in Chippewa oral tradition and then continue with connecting typical traits of the legendary trickster with persons in Erdrich’s fiction. The major emphasis is placed on Gerry Nanapush, Lulu Lamartine and Lipsha Morrissey although several other characters do certainly show typical aspects of a trickster as well, such as June, Old Man Nanapush, Sister Leopolda, Marie, Moses etc. [...] _____ 1 There are three principal designations for the Chippewa: Anishinaabeg, Ojibwa and Chippewa. Vizenor reveals that Chippewa and Ojibwa are contemporary labels used by white Americans to designate these peoples, whereas they refer themselves as Anishinaabe: Gerald Vizenor, The People Named the Chippewa: Narrative Histories (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984) 13-14. For this study I have selected Chippewa because Erdrich prefers this variation. 2 cf. Joni Adamson Clarke, “Why Bears Are Good to Think and Theory Doesn’t Have to Be Murder: Transformation and Oral Tradition in Louise Erdrich’s Tracks,” Studies in American Indian Literatures: The Journal of the Association for the Study of American Indian Literatures 4.1 (Spring 1992): 32.
Download or read book Living Sideways written by Franchot Ballinger and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2006-08-31 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Native American tricksters can be buffoons, transformers, social critics, teachers, and mediators between human beings, nature, and the gods. A vibrant part of American Indian tradition, the trickster has shown a remarkable ability to adapt into the twenty-first century. In Living Sideways, Franchot Ballinger provides the first full-length study of the diverse roles and dimensions of North American Indian tricksters. While honoring their diversity and complexity, he challenges stereotypical Euro-American treatments of tricksters. Drawing from the most influential scholarship on Native American tricksters, Ballinger shows how many critics have failed to consider both the specifics of trickster stories and their cultural contexts. Each chapter concentrates on a particular aspect of the trickster theme, such as the trickster’s ambiguous personality, the variety of trickster roles, and the trickster’s role as social critic. Ballinger further considers issues of sex, gender, and humor, the use of trickster tales as instructions on social values and community control, and the trickster as an emblem of modern Indian survival. Living Sideways also includes illustrative trickster stories at the end of each chapter, a comprehensive bibliography, and discussion of the literary aspects of tricksters. Examining both the sacred power of tricksters and the stories as literature, Living Sideways is the most thorough book to date on Native American tricksters.
Download or read book Coyote written by and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 1999 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Coyote insists the crows teach him how to fly, but the experience ends in diaster.
Download or read book Forms and Functions of the Trickster Figure in Thomas King s Green Grass Running Water written by Aleksandra Pendarovska and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2004-08-06 with total page 15 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 2 (B), University of Cologne (English Seminar), language: English, abstract: Thomas King ́s novel Green Grass, Running Water distinguishes itself from most of the modern novels, above all, from the novels written by Native American authors, in its genuine form and content. Not only the synthesis of oral and written form of narrating stories makes it a valuable literary work that reveals evidence for the existence of a relatively, if not utterly unknown culture, but also the author ́s effort to depict characters and stories from the mythology of the Native Americans contribute to it. The central figure among the mythological figures from the Native American culture in the novel Green Grass, Running Water is, by all means, the figure of Coyote. A lot of research has been conducted on the importance of this figure in the Native American mythology, on its meaning in Thomas King ́s novel and on the combination of these two aspects. It could be regarded that Thomas King attempts through his characters to illustrate on a larger scale the relationship between two diverse entities and their unequal position in it. This argument has been considered to a large extent by many authors and academics, among which Herb Wyile presents the following point in his article “ ′Trust Tonto′ Thomas King ́s subversive fictions and the politics of cultural literacy. “Given these various elements, it might be tempting initially to describe his work as blending Western literary forms with forms from Native cultures. A more appropriate characterization, however, can be found in Kimberley Blaeser’s description of the trickster figure in Native writing as ‘[n]ot a composite, which is made up of distinct and recognizable parts, but a complex, which is one unit whose makeup is intricate and interwoven’ (“Trickster” 51). Her description applies nicely to King’s writing, since in those Native cultures (and King’s writing as an extension of them), that blending or syncretism is already there, because of the cross-fertilization historically and currently between different tribal traditions and because of the legacy of the history of colonialism, during which cultural interaction was imposed.”1 In the light of the opinion presented in the above written quotation this paper will concentrate on the analysis of the meaning and form of the pivotal figure in Thomas King’s novel Green Grass, Running Water – the trickster figure of Coyote and attempt to discover the intertwined intertextuality in the dialogs, in which Coyote takes part.
Download or read book Green Grass Running Water written by Thomas King and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2012-10-30 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Strong, sassy women and hard-luck, hard-headed men, all searching for the middle ground between Native American tradition and the modern world, perform an elaborate dance of approach and avoidance in this magical, rollicking tale by award-winning author Thomas King. Alberta, Eli, Lionel and others are coming to the Blackfoot reservation for the Sun Dance. There they will encounter four Indian elders and their companion, the trickster Coyote—and nothing in the small town of Blossom will be the same again. . . .
