The trickster figure Reynard the Fox as depicted in an 1869 children's book by Michel Rodange. Reynard the Fox, also known as Renard, Renart, Reinard, Reinecke, Reinhardus, Reynardt, Reynaerde Michel Rodange ( 3 January 1827 – 27 August 1876) was a Luxembourgian

In mythology, and in the study of folklore and religion, a trickster is a god, goddess, spirit, man, woman, or anthropomorphic animal who plays tricks or otherwise disobeys normal rules and norms of behavior. The word mythology (from the Greek grc μυθολογία mythología, meaning "a story-telling a legendary lore" History The concept of folklore developed as part of the 19th century ideology of Romantic nationalism, leading to the reshaping of oral traditions to serve modern ideological A religion is a set of Tenets and practices often centered upon specific Supernatural and moral claims about Reality, the Cosmos God is the principal or sole Deity in Religions and other belief systems that worship one deity. A goddess is a Female Deity. Many Cultures have goddesses Often deities are part of a polytheistic system that includes several deities The English word " spirit " comes from the Latin " spiritus " (breath Anthropomorphism is the attribution of uniquely Human characteristics to non-human creatures and beings natural and supernatural phenomena material states and objects

While the trickster crosses various cultural traditions, there are significant differences between tricksters in the traditions of many Indigenous peoples and those in the Euro-American tradition:

"Many native traditions held clowns and tricksters as essential to any contact with the sacred. The term Indigenous Peoples or autochthonous peoples can be used to describe any Ethnic group who inhabit a geographic region with which they have the earliest historical Clowns are comic performers stereotypically characterized by their Grotesque appearance colored wigs stylistic makeup, outlandish Costumes unusually SACRED was a Cubesat built by the Student Satellite Program of the University of Arizona. People could not pray until they had laughed, because laughter opens and frees from rigid preconception. Humans had to have tricksters within the most sacred ceremonies for fear that they forget the sacred comes through upset, reversal, surprise. A ceremony is an activity infused with Ritual significance performed on a special occasion The trickster in most native traditions is essential to creation, to birth". ^[1]

Native tricksters should not be confused with the Euro-American fictional picaro. The picaresque novel ( Spanish: "picaresca", from "pícaro", for " Rogue " or " Rascal " is a One of the most important distinctions is that "we can see in the Native American trickster an openness to life's multiplicity and paradoxes largely missing in the modern Euro-American moral tradition". ^[2]

Mythology

The trickster deity breaks the rules of the gods or nature, sometimes maliciously (for example, Loki) but usually, albeit unintentionally, with ultimately positive effects. In Cryptography, LOKI89 and LOKI91 are Block ciphers designed as possible replacements for the Data Encryption Standard (DES Often, the rule-breaking takes the form of tricks (eg. Eris) or thievery. Eris ( Greek Ἔρις, "Strife" is the Greek Goddess of strife her name being translated into Latin as Discordia Tricksters can be cunning or foolish or both; they are often funny even when considered sacred or performing important cultural tasks. An example of this is the sacred Heyoka, whose role is to play tricks and games and by doing so raises awareness and acts as an equalizer.

In many cultures, (as may be seen in Greek, Norse, or Slavic folktales, along with Native American/First Nations lore), the trickster and the culture hero are often combined. Greek mythology is the body of stories belonging to the ancient Greeks concerning their gods and Heroes the nature of the world and the origins and significance Norse mythology comprises the indigenous pre-Christian religion, beliefs and Legends of the Scandinavian peoples including those who settled on Iceland Slavic mythology is the Mythological aspect of the Religion that was practised by the ancient Slavs. For indigenous peoples in the United States other than Hawaii and Alaska see also Native Americans in the United States. First Nations is a term of Ethnicity that refers to the Aboriginal peoples in Canada who are neither Inuit nor Métis people A culture hero is a Mythological Hero specific to some group ( cultural, ethnic, racial, religious, etc To illustrate: Prometheus, in Greek mythology, stole fire from the gods to give to humans. In Greek mythology, Prometheus (Προμηθεύς "forethought" is a Titan known for his wily intelligence who stole Fire from Zeus Greek mythology is the body of stories belonging to the ancient Greeks concerning their gods and Heroes the nature of the world and the origins and significance Fire is the heat and light energy released during a Chemical reaction, in particular a combustion reaction. He is more of a culture hero than a trickster. In many Native American and First Nations mythologies, the coyote (Southwestern United States) or raven (Pacific Northwest, coastal British Columbia, Alaska and Russian Far East) stole fire from the gods (stars, moon, and/or sun) and are more tricksters than culture heroes. Coyote is a Mythological character common to many Native American cultures based on the Coyote ( Canis latrans) animal The Southwestern area of the United States could be defined as the states west of the Mississippi River, with the qualification of a certain northern limit such as the 37 Ravens are common characters in the traditional narratives and Mythology around the world notably a part of North American, Siberian, and The Pacific Northwest is a region in the northwest of North America (the term refers to the land not the ocean British Columbia (ˌbrɪtɨʃ kəˈlʌmbiə ( BC) ( (la Colombie-Britannique C Alaska ( Аляска Alyaska) is a state in the United States of America, in the northwest of the North American continent Kutkh (also Kutkha, Kootkha, Kutq and variants Кутх is a Raven spirit traditionally revered in various forms by various indigenous A star is a massive luminous ball of plasma. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun, which is the source of most of the Energy on Earth The Sun (Sol is the Star at the center of the Solar System. This is primarily because of other stories involving these spirits: Prometheus was a Titan, whereas the Coyote spirit and Raven spirit are usually seen as jokesters and pranksters. In Greek mythology, the Titans ( Greek: Tītā́n; plural Tītânes) were a race of powerful Deities that ruled during the legendary Coyote is a Mythological character common to many Native American cultures based on the Coyote ( Canis latrans) animal Ravens are common characters in the traditional narratives and Mythology around the world notably a part of North American, Siberian, and

Frequently the Trickster figure exhibits gender and form variability, changing gender roles and engaging in same-sex practices. Such figures appear in Native American and First Nations mythologies, where they are said to have a two-spirit nature. Shapeshifting is a common theme in Mythology and Folklore, as well as in Science fiction and Fantasy. Homosexuality refers to sexual behavior with or attraction to people of the same sex or to a Homosexual orientation. Two-Spirit (also two spirit or twospirit) people are Native Americans who fulfill one of many mixed Gender roles found traditionally among many Loki, the Norse trickster, also exhibits gender variability, in one case even becoming pregnant; interestingly, he shares the ability to change genders with Odin, the chief Norse deity who also possesses many characteristics of the Trickster. Odin (ˈoʊdɪn from Old Norse Óðinn) is considered the chief god in Norse paganism. In the case of Loki's pregnancy, he was forced by the Gods to stop a giant from erecting a wall for them before 7 days passed; he solved the problem by transforming into a mare and drawing the giant's magical horse away from its work. In Cryptography, LOKI89 and LOKI91 are Block ciphers designed as possible replacements for the Data Encryption Standard (DES He returned some time later with a child he had given birth to--the eight-legged horse Sleipnir, who served as Odin's steed. In Norse mythology, Sleipnir is Odin 's eight-legged steed and the greatest of all Horses His name means smooth or gliding, and is

In some cultures, there are dualistic myths, featuring two demiurges creating the world, or two culture heroes arranging the world — in a complementary manner. Demiurge (the Latinized form of Greek demiourgos, δημιουργός, literally "public or skilled worker" from demos A culture hero is a Mythological Hero specific to some group ( cultural, ethnic, racial, religious, etc Dualistic cosmologies are present in all inhabited continents^[3] and show great diversity: they may feature culture heroes, but also demiurges (exemplifying a dualistic creation myth in the latter case), or other beings; the two heroes may compete or collaborate; they may be conceived as neutral or contrasted as good versus evil; be of the same importance or distinguished as powerful versus weak; be brothers (even twins) or be not relatives at all. Dualistic cosmology is a collective term Many variant myths and creation motifs are so described in ethnographic and anthropological A creation myth is a supernatural mytho-[[religion religious]] story or explanation that describes the beginnings of humanity, Earth, life, and ^[4]

Coyote

The Coyote mythos is one of the most popular among Native American cultures. Coyote is a ubiquitous being and can be categorized in many types. In creation myths, Coyote appears as the Creator himself; but he may at the same time be the messenger, the culture hero, the trickster, the fool. A creation myth is a supernatural mytho-[[religion religious]] story or explanation that describes the beginnings of humanity, Earth, life, and A creator deity is a Deity in a Creation myth responsible for the creation of the World (or Universe) A culture hero is a Mythological Hero specific to some group ( cultural, ethnic, racial, religious, etc He has also the ability of the transformer: in some stories he is a handsome young man; in others he is an animal; yet others present him as just a power, a sacred one. According to Crow (and other Plains) tradition, Old Man Coyote impersonates the Creator, "Old Man Coyote took up a handful of mud and out of it made people". ^[5] His creative power is also spread onto words, "Old Man Coyote named buffalo, deer, elk, antelopes, and bear. And all these came into being". In such myths Coyote-Creator is never mentioned as an animal; more, he can meet his animal counterpart, the coyote: they address each other as "elder brother" and "younger brother", and walk and talk together. According to A. Hultkranz, the impersonation of Coyote as Creator is a result of a taboo, a mythic substitute to the religious notion of the Great Spirit whose name was too dangerous and/or sacred to use apart from a special ceremony.

In Chelan myths, Coyote belongs to the animal people but he is at the same time "a power just like the Creator, the head of all the creatures". Yet his being 'just like the Creator' does not really mean being 'the Creator': it is not seldom that Coyote-Just-Like-Creator is subject to the Creator, Great Chief Above, who can punish him, send him away, take powers away from him, etc. In the Pacific Northwest tradition, Coyote is mostly mentioned as a messenger, or minor power, "Coyote was sent to the camp of the chief of the Cold Wind tribe to deliver a challenge; Coyote traveled around to tell all the people in both tribes about the contest. " As such, Coyote "was cruelly treated, and his work was never done. "

As the culture hero, Coyote appears in various mythic traditions. His major heroic attributes are transformation, traveling, high deeds, power. He is engaged in changing the ways of rivers, standing of mountains, creating new landscapes and getting sacred things for people. Of mention is the tradition of Coyote fighting against monsters. According to Wasco tradition, Coyote was the hero to fight and kill Thunderbird, the killer of people, but he could do that not because of his personal power, but due to the help of the Spirit Chief; Coyote was trying his best, he was fighting hard, and he had to have fasted ten days before the fight, so advised by Spirit Chief 8. In many Wasco myths, Coyote rivals the Raven (Crow) about the same ordeal: in some stories, Multnomah Falls came to be by Coyote's efforts; in others, it is done by Raven.

More often than not Coyote is a trickster, but he is always different. In some stories, he is a noble trickster, "Coyote takes water from the Frog people. . . because it is not right that one people have all the water. " In others, he is mean, "Coyote determined to bring harm to Duck. He took Duck's wife and children, whom he treated badly. "

Archetype

Further information: List of modern day tricksters

The Trickster is an example of a Jungian archetype. This List of modern day tricksters attests to both the enduring nature of the mythological figure of the Trickster and its continued popularity in a variety of Archetypes are according to Swiss Psychologist Carl Jung, innate universal psychic dispositions that form the substrate from which the basic themes of In modern literature the trickster survives as a character archetype, not necessarily supernatural or divine, sometimes no more than a stock character. A stock character is one which relies heavily on cultural types or names for his or her personality manner of speech and other characteristics

In later folklore, the trickster is incarnated as a clever, mischievous man or creature, who tries to survive the dangers and challenges of the world using trickery and deceit as a defense. For example many typical fairy tales have the King who wants to find the best groom for his daughter by ordering several trials. A fairy tale or fairy story is a fictional Story that may feature folkloric characters (such as fairies, enchantments]] often involving No brave and valiant prince or knight manages to win them, until a poor and simple peasant comes. With the help of his wits and cleverness, instead of fighting, he evades or fools monsters and villains and dangers with unorthodox manners. Therefore the most unlikely candidate passes the trials and receives the reward. More modern and obvious examples of that type are Bugs Bunny and The Tramp (Charlie Chaplin) (see list). Clyde Rabbit (uncleMrs Bugs Bunny (wifePapa Bunny (fatherMama Bunny (motherRugs Bunny The Tramp, also known as The Little Tramp ( Charlot internationally Carlitos in Brazilian Portuguese) was Charlie Chaplin 's most memorable This List of modern day tricksters attests to both the enduring nature of the mythological figure of the Trickster and its continued popularity in a variety of

The trickster is an enduring archetype that crosses many cultures and appears in a wide variety of popular media. Culture (from the Latin cultura stemming from colere, meaning "to cultivate" generally refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic "Popular press" redirects here note that the University of Wisconsin Press publishes under the imprint "The Popular Press" For a modern humanist study of the trickster archetypes and their effects on society and its evolution, see Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth, and Art by Lewis Hyde. Lewis Hyde is a scholar and writer whose scholarly work focuses on the nature of Imagination, Creativity, and Property.

The trickster's literary role in dismantling oppressive systems

Modern African American literary criticism has turned the trickster figure into one example of how it is possible to overcome a system of oppression from within. For years, African American literature was discounted by the greater community of American literary criticism while its authors were still obligated to use the language and the rhetoric of the very system that relegated African Americans and other minorities to the ostracized position of the cultural “other. African American literature is the body of Literature produced in the United States by writers of African descent ” The central question became one of how to overcome this system when the only words available were created and defined by the oppressors. As Audre Lorde explained, the problem was that “the master’s tools [would] never dismantle the master’s house. ”^[6]

In his writings of the late 1980s, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. presents the concept of Signifyin(g). Henry Louis “Skip” Gates Jr (born September 16, 1950) is an American literary critic, educator scholar writer editor and Public intellectual Signifyin' (slang is an African-American Rhetorical device featuring indirect Communication or Persuasion and the creating of new meanings for Wound up in this theory is the idea that the “master’s house” can be “dismantled” using his “tools” if the tools are used in a new or unconventional way. To demonstrate this process, Gates cites the interactions found in African American narrative poetry between the trickster, the “Signifying Monkey”, and his oppressor, the Lion. ^[7] According to Gates, the “Signifying Monkey” is the “New World figuration” and “functional equivalent” of the Esu trickster figure of African Yoruba mythology. ^[8] The Lion functions as the authoritative figure in his classical role of “King of the Jungle. ”^[9] He is the one who commands the Signifying Monkey’s movements. Yet the Monkey is able to outwit the Lion continually in these narratives through his usage of figurative language. According to Gates, “[T]he Signifying Monkey is able to signify upon the Lion because the Lion does not understand the Monkey’s discourse…The monkey speaks figuratively, in a symbolic code; the lion interprets or reads literally and suffers the consequences of his folly…”^[10] In this way, the Monkey uses the same language as the Lion, but he uses it on a level that the Lion cannot comprehend. This usually leads to the Lion’s “trounc[ing]” at the hands of a third-party, the Elephant. ^[11] The net effect of all of this is “the reversal of [the Lion’s] status as the King of the Jungle. ”^[12] In this way, the “master’s house” is dismantled when his own tools are turned against him by the trickster Monkey.

Following in this tradition, critics since Gates have come to assert that another popular African American folk trickster, Brer Rabbit, uses clever language to perform the same kind of rebellious societal deconstruction as the Signifying Monkey. Br'er Rabbit (also spelled Bre'r Rabbit or Brer Rabbit or Buh Rabbit) is a central figure in the Uncle Remus stories of the Southern United Brer Rabbit is the “creative way that the slave community responded to the oppressor’s failure to address them as human beings created in the image of God. ”^[13] The figurative representative of this slave community, Brer Rabbit is the hero with a “fragile body but a deceptively strong mind” that allows him to “create [his] own symbols in defiance of the perverted logic of the oppressor. ”^[14] By twisting language to create these symbols, Brer Rabbit not only was the “personification of the ethic of self-preservation” for the slave community, but also “an alternative response to their oppressor’s false doctrine of anthropology. ”^[15] Through his language of trickery, Brer Rabbit outwits his oppressors, deconstructing, in small ways, the hierarchy of subjugation to which his weak body forces him to physically conform.

Before Gates, there was some precedent for the analysis of African American folk heroes as destructive agents of an oppressive hierarchical system. In the 1920s and 1930s, T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound engaged in an epistolary correspondence. Thomas Stearns Eliot, OM (September 26 1888 – January 4 1965 was a poet Dramatist, and Literary critic. Ezra Weston Loomis Pound ( Hailey, Idaho Territory, United States October 30 1885 – Venice, Italy November 1 1972 was an American Expatriate ^[16] Both writers signed the letters with pseudonyms adopted from the Uncle Remus tales; Eliot was “Possum;” Pound was “Tar Baby. Uncle Remus is a Fictional character, the title character and fictional narrator of a collection of African American folktales adapted and compiled by Joel A possum is any of about 64 small to medium-sized Arboreal Marsupial Species native to Australia, New Guinea, and Sulawesi Tar-Baby was a doll made of Tar and Turpentine, used to entrap Br'er Rabbit in the second of the Uncle Remus stories ” Pound and Eliot wrote in the same “African slave” dialect of the tales. Pound, writing later of the series of letters, distinguished the language from “the Queen’s English, the language of public propriety. ”^[17] This rebellion against proper language came as part of “collaboration” between Pound and Eliot “against the London literary establishment and the language that it used. ”^[18] Although Pound and Eliot were not attempting to overthrow an establishment as expansive as the one oppressing the African American slave community, they were actively trying to establish for themselves a new kind of literary freedom. In their usage of the Uncle Remus trickster figures’ names and dialects, they display an early understanding of the way in which cleverly manipulated language can dismantle a restrictive hierarchy. Uncle Remus is a Fictional character, the title character and fictional narrator of a collection of African American folktales adapted and compiled by Joel

African American literary criticism and folktales are not the only place in the American literary tradition that tricksters are to be found combating subjugation from within an oppressive system. In When Brer Rabbit Meets Coyote, the argument is posited that the Brer Rabbit stories were derived from a mixture of African and Native American mythology, thus attributing part of the credit for the formation of the tales and wiles of Brer Rabbit to “Indian captivity narratives” and the rabbit trickster found in Cherokee mythology. Like other religions Native American belief systems include many sacred narratives The Cherokee (ᎠᏂᏴᏫᏯ a-ni-yv-wi-ya, in the Cherokee language) are a people native to North America, who at the time of European contact ^[19] In arguing for a merged “African-Native American folklore,” the idea is forwarded that certain shared “cultural affinities” between African Americans and Native Americans allowed both groups “through the trickster tales…survive[d] European American cultural and political domination. ”^[20]

Tricksters in various cultures

See also

• List of modern day tricksters
• Miwok Coyote and Silver Fox
• Grotesque body
• Native Americans in the United States
• Evil clown

Notes

References

• Franchot Ballinger, Gerald Vizenor Sacred Reversals: Trickster in Gerald Vizenor's "Earthdivers: Tribal Narratives on Mixed Descent" American Indian Quarterly, Vol. Gerald Robert Vizenor (born 1934) is a Native American ( Anishinaabe) writer and an enrolled member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe 9, No. 1, The Literary Achievements of Gerald Vizenor (Winter, 1985), pp. 55-59 doi:10. 2307/1184653
• Franchot Ballinger Ambigere: The Euro-American Picaro and the Native American Trickster MELUS, Vol. 17, No. 1, Native American Fiction: Myth and Criticism (Spring, 1991 - Spring, 1992), pp. 21-38 doi:10. 2307/467321
• L. Bryce Boyer, Ruth M. Boyer The Sacred Clown of the Chiricahua and Mescalero Apaches: Additional Data Western Folklore, Vol. 42, No. 1 (Jan. , 1983), pp. 46-54 doi:10. 2307/1499465
• California on the Eve - California Indians Miwok creation story
• Joseph Durwin Coulrophobia & The Trickster
• George P. Miwok (also spelled Miwuk, Mi-Wuk, or Me-Wuk) can refer to any one of four linguistically-related groups of Native Americans, who lived in what Hansen The trickster and the Paranormal (2001)
• Koepping, Klaus-Peter [1] (Feb 1985). "Absurdity and Hidden Truth: Cunning Intelligence and Grotesque Body Images as Manifestations of the Trickster". History of Religions 24 (3): 191-214.  
• Lori Landay Madcaps, Screwballs, and Con Women: The Female Trickster in American Culture 1998 University of Pennsylvania Press
• Paul Radin The trickster: a study in American Indian mythology (1956)
• Allan J. Ryan The Trickster Shift: Humour and irony in contemporary native art 1999 Univ of Washington ISBN 0774807040
• Trickster’s Way Volume 3, Issue 1 2004 Article 3 TRICKSTER AND THE TREKS OF HISTORY
• Zolotarjov, A. M. (1980). "Társadalomszervezet és dualisztikus teremtésmítoszok Szibériában", in Hoppál, Mihály: A Tejút fiai. Tanulmányok a finnugor népek hitvilágáról (in Hungarian). Budapest: Európa Könyvkiadó, 29–58. ISBN 963 07 2187 2.   Chapter means: “Social structure and dualistic creation myths in Siberia”; title means: “The sons of Milky Way. Studies on the belief systems of Finno-Ugric peoples”.

External links

• Trickster, Intercultural Studies Online Review, edited in Italian
• How The Leopard Got His Spots - a trickster tale appropriated by Rudyard Kipling
• Joel Chandler Harris and the Uncle Remus Collection