{"product_id":"the-trickster-isbn-9780805203516","title":"The Trickster","description":"The myth of the Trickster—ambiguous creator and destroyer, cheater and cheated, subhuman and superhuman—is one of the earliest and most universal expressions of mankind. Nowhere does it survive in more starkly archaic form than in the voraciously uninhibited episodes of the Winnebago Trickster Cycle, recorded here is full. Anthropological and psychological analyses by Radin, Kerényi, and Jung reveal with Trickster as filling a twofold role: on the one hand he is \"an archetypal psychic structure\" that harks back to \"an absolutely undifferentiated human consciousness, corresponding to a psyche that has hardly left the animal level\" (Jung); on the other hand, his myth is a present-day outlet for the most unashamed and liberating satire of the onerous obligation of social order, religion, and ritual.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eWith commentaries by Karl Kerényi and C. G. Jung\u003cbr\u003eIntroduction by Stanley Diamond\u003c\/i\u003eIntroductory Essay by Stanley Diamond xi\u003cbr\u003ePrefatory Note by Paul Radin xxiii\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePART ONE: The Trickster Myth of the Winnebago Indians\u003cbr\u003eI. The Winnebago Trickster Cycle 3\u003cbr\u003eII. Notes to Pages 3-53 54\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePART TWO: Supplementary Trickster Myths\u003cbr\u003eI. The Winnebago Hare Cycle 63\u003cbr\u003eII. Notes to Pages 63-91 92\u003cbr\u003eIII. Summary of the Assiniboine Trickster Myth 97\u003cbr\u003eIV. Summary of the Tlingit Trickster Myth 104\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePART THREE: The Nature and Meaning of the Myth by Paul Radin\u003cbr\u003eI. The Text 111\u003cbr\u003eII. Winnebago History and Culture 112\u003cbr\u003eIII. Winnebago Mythology and Literary Tradition 118\u003cbr\u003eIV. The Winnebago Hare Cycle and its Cognates 124\u003cbr\u003eV. The Winnebago Trickster Figure 132\u003cbr\u003eVI. The Attitude of the Winnebago toward Wakdjunkaga 147\u003cbr\u003eVII. The Wakdjunkaga Cycle as a Satire 151\u003cbr\u003eVIII. The Wakdjunkaga Cycle and its Relation to other North American Indian Trickster Cycles 155\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePART FOUR: The Trickster in Relation to Greek Mythology by Karl Kerényi, Translated by R. F. C. Hull\u003cbr\u003eI. First Impressions 173\u003cbr\u003eII. Style 177\u003cbr\u003eIII. Parallels 180\u003cbr\u003eIV. Nature of the Trickster 184\u003cbr\u003eV. His Difference from Hermes 188\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePART FIVE: On the Psychology of the Trickster Figure by C. G. Jung, Translated by R. F. C. Hull 195“A fascinating excursion into one of the more curious byways of the mind . . . \u003ci\u003eThe Trickster\u003c\/i\u003e should interest many besides professional anthropologists and psychologists.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Times [London] Literary Supplement\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003ePAUL RADIN\u003c\/b\u003e (1883-1959), was an American cultural anthropologist and folklorist of the early twentieth century specializing in Native American languages and cultures, with a focus on the Winnebago Tribe. He was head of the Department of Anthropology at Brandeis University. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eStanley Diamond is a Professor at the New School for Social Research.PREFATORY NOTE\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eFew myths have so wide a distribution as the one, known by the name of \u003ci\u003eThe Trickster, \u003c\/i\u003ewhich we are presenting here. For few can we so confidently assert that they belong to the oldest expressions of mankind. Few other myths have persisted with their fundamental content unchanged. The Trickster myth is found in clearly recognizable form among the simplest aboriginal tribes and among the complex. We encounter it among the ancient Greeks, the Chinese, the Japanese, and in the Semitic world. Many of the Trickster’s traits were perpetuated in the figure of the mediaeval jester, and have survived right up to the present day in the Punch-and-Judy plays and in the clown. Although repeatedly combined with other myths and frequently drastically reorganized and reinterpreted, its basic plot seems always to have succeeded in reasserting itself.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eManifestly we are here in the presence of a figure and a theme or themes which have had a special and permanent appeal and an unusual attraction for mankind from the very beginnings of civilization. In what must be regarded as its earliest and most archaic form, as found among the North American Indians, Trickster is at one and the same time creator and destroyer, giver and negator, he who dupes others and who is always duped himself. He wills nothing consciously. At all times he is constrained to behave as he does from impulses over which he has no control. He knows neither good nor evil yet he is responsible for both. He possesses no values, moral or social, is at the mercy of his passions and appetites, yet through his actions all values come into being. But not only he, so our myth tells us, possesses these traits. So, likewise, do the other figures of the plot connected with him: the animals, the various supernatural beings and monsters, and man.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eTrickster himself is, not infrequently, identified with specific animals, such as raven, coyote, hare, spider, but these animals are only secondarily to be equated with concrete animals. Basically he possesses no well-defined and fixed form. As he is represented in the version of the Trickster myth we are publishing here, he is primarily an inchoate being of undetermined proportions, a figure foreshadowing the shape of man. In this version he possesses intestines wrapped around his body, and an equally long penis, likewise wrapped around his body with his scrotum on top of it. Yet regarding his specific features we are, significantly enough, told nothing.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eLaughter, humour, and irony permeate everything Trickster does. The reaction of the audience in aboriginal societies to both him and his exploits is prevailingly one of laughter tempered by awe. There is no reason for believing this is secondary or a late development. Yet it is difficult to say whether the audience is laughing at him, at the tricks he plays on others, or at the implications his behaviour and activities have for them.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eHow shall we interpret this amazing figure? Are we dealing here with the workings of the mythopoeic imagination, common to all mankind, which, at a certain period in man’s history, give us his picture of the world and of himself? Is this a \u003ci\u003especulum mentis \u003c\/i\u003ewherein is depicted man’s struggle with himself and with a world into which he had been thrust without his volition and consent? Is this the answer, or the adumbration of an answer, to questions forced upon him, consciously or unconsciously, since his appearance on earth?\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eOn the basis of the very extensive data which we have today from aboriginal tribes it is not only a reasonable but, indeed, almost a verifiable hypothesis that we are here actually in the presence of such an archaic \u003ci\u003especulum mentis.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOur problem is this basically a psychological one. In fact, only if we view it as primarily such, as an attempt by man to solve his problems inward and outward, does the figure of Trickster become intelligible and meaningful. But we cannot properly and fully understand the nature of these problems or the manner in which they have been formulated in the various Trickster myths unless we study these myths in their specific cultural environments and in their historical settings.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eThe following paper is the presentation of one such Trickster myth, that found among the Siouan-speaking Winnebago of central Wisconsin and eastern Nebraska. To see it in its proper perspective I have added, in Part Two, the Winnebago Hare myth in full and summaries of the Assiniboine and Tlingit Trickster myths.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e—Paul Radin\u003cbr\u003eLugano, 1956","brand":"Schocken","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46303722504421,"sku":"NP9780805203516","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780805203516.jpg?v=1767741911","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/the-trickster-isbn-9780805203516","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}