Contents • • • • • • • • • • • Mythology [ ] Tricksters are characters who appear in the myths of many different cultures. Describes the trickster as a 'boundary-crosser'. The trickster crosses and often breaks both physical and societal rules. Tricksters '.violate principles of social and natural order, playfully disrupting normal life and then re-establishing it on a new basis.' Often, the bending/breaking of rules takes the form of tricks or thievery. Tricksters can be or foolish or both. The trickster openly questions and mocks authority.

Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2004. “Women on the Market” Literary Theory: An Anthology. Rivkin and Michael. Submit to the will of the gods by refusing to merge peacefully with Aeneas's men. Virgil is reminding his audience of.

They are usually male characters, and are fond of breaking rules, boasting, and playing tricks on both humans and gods. All cultures have tales of the trickster, a crafty creature who uses cunning to get food, steal precious possessions, or simply cause mischief. In some Greek myths plays the trickster. He is the patron of thieves and the inventor of lying, a gift he passed on to, who in turn passed it on to. In folktales, the trickster and the are often combined. Cuts the hair of the goddess. Frequently the trickster figure exhibits gender and variability.

In the mischief-maker is, who is also a shape shifter. Loki also exhibits gender variability, in one case even becoming pregnant. He who later gives birth to Odin's eight-legged horse. British scholar Evan Brown suggested that in the Bible has many of the characteristics of the trickster: The tricks Jacob plays on his twin brother, his father and his father-in-law are immoral by conventional standards, designed to cheat other people and gain material and social advantages he is not entitled to. Nevertheless, the Biblical narrative clearly takes Jacob's side and the reader is invited to laugh and admire Jacob's ingenuity–as is the case with the tricksters of other cultures'.

In The Trickster and the Paranormal, G. Hansen lists in Roman mythology, and in as examples of the trickster archetype. In a wide variety of African language communities, the rabbit is the trickster.

In West Africa (and thence into the Caribbean via the slave trade), the spider () is often the trickster. Archetype [ ]. Further information: The trickster or clown is an example of a.

In modern literature the trickster survives as a character archetype, not necessarily supernatural or divine, sometimes no more than a. Often too, the trickster is distinct in a story by his acting as a sort of catalyst, in that his antics are the cause of other characters' discomfiture, but he himself is left untouched. A once-famous example of this was the character on the early children's television show 'Andy's Gang'. A cigar-puffing puppet, Froggy induced the adult humans around him to engage in ridiculous and self-destructive hi-jinks. In later folklore, the trickster/clown 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. He also is known for entertaining people as a clown does. For example, many typical have the king who wants to find the best groom for his daughter by ordering several trials.

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 include and. Role in African American literature [ ] 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, 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.' The central question became one of how to overcome this system when the only words available were created and defined by the oppressors. As explained, the problem was that 'the master's tools [would] never dismantle the master's house.' In his writings of the late 1980s, presents the concept of.

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,, and his oppressor, the Lion. According to Gates, the 'Signifying Monkey' is the 'New World figuration' and 'functional equivalent' of the Eshu trickster figure of African Yoruba mythology. The Lion functions as the authoritative figure in his classical role of 'King of the Jungle.' 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 discourseThe monkey speaks figuratively, in a symbolic code; the lion interprets or reads literally and suffers the consequences of his folly.'

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. The net effect of all of this is 'the reversal of [the Lion's] status as the King of the Jungle.' In this way, the 'master's house' is dismantled when his own tools are turned against him. Is a trickster character who succeeds through his wits rather than through strength. Following in this tradition, critics since Gates have come to assert that another popular African American folk trickster, (a contraction of 'Brother Rabbit'), uses clever language to perform the same kind of rebellious societal deconstruction as the Signifying Monkey. 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.'

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.' 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.' 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, and engaged in an epistolary correspondence. Both writers signed the letters with pseudonyms adopted from the tales; Eliot was ';' Pound was '.' 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.' 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.'

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 trickster figures' names and dialects, they display an early understanding of the way in which cleverly manipulated language can dismantle a restrictive hierarchy. 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, 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. 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 talessurvive[d] European American cultural and political domination.' In Native American tradition [ ] While the trickster crosses various cultural traditions, there are significant differences between tricksters in the traditions of different parts of the world: Many native traditions held and tricksters as essential to any contact with the. People could not pray until they had laughed, because opens and frees from rigid preconception. Humans had to have tricksters within the most sacred for fear that they forget the sacred comes through upset, reversal, surprise. The trickster in most native traditions is essential to creation, to birth. Native American tricksters should not be confused with the European fictional.

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'. In some stories the Native American trickster is foolish and other times wise. He can be a hero in one tale and a villain in the next. In many Native American and First Nations mythologies, the () or () stole fire from the gods (,, and/or ). Both are usually seen as jokesters and pranksters.

In Native American creation stories, when Coyote teaches humans how to catch salmon, he makes the first fish weir out of logs and branches. Wakdjunga in mythology is an example of the trickster archetype. Coyote often has the role of trickster as well as a clown in traditional stories. The Coyote mythos is one of the most popular among western Native American cultures, especially among and. According to (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'. He also bestowed names on buffalo, deer, elk, antelopes, and bear. 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 at special ceremonies. [ ] In 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. George Foreman Grill Cooking Times Bratwurst Cooking. ' While still being a subject of the Creator who can punish him or remove his powers.

In the Pacific Northwest tradition, Coyote is mostly mentioned as a messenger, or minor power. As the culture hero, Coyote appears in various mythic traditions, but generally with the same magical powers of transformation, resurrection, and 'medicine'. He is engaged in changing the ways of rivers, 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, the killer of people, but he could do that not because of his personal power, but due to the help of the Spirit Chief.

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 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 malicious: 'Coyote determined to bring harm to Duck. He took Duck's wife and children, whom he treated badly.' [ ] In Internet and multimedia studies [ ] In online environments there has been a link between the trickster and. Some have said that a trickster is a type of online community character. Others see trickery online as being as much of a problem as. In oral stories [ ]. Trickster in: Tom Fashion, pretending to be Lord Foppington, parleys with Sir Tunbelly Clumsey in a 19th-century illustration.

•: •: • Afro-Cuban mythology: •: •: (or Compere Lapin) and, a corruption of Anansi (Anansee) •:,, • folklore: •:, •: •: • mythology: (Tsuro or Kalulu) •: • Belgian mythology: •:, • /: (Itar Pejo) •: •: •:,, •: ('Peter Urdemales' in English.) •: (Fox spirit),,, (Monkey King) • mythology: •: Awakkule, • folklore:, •:, •:,, • mythology: • folklore: •: Fuchs, the, •:,,,,,, •:, •:, •: Baby (stealing butter),,, (shapeshifting and teasing sages). • and: •: • folklore:, or in modern grammar •: • folklore:, •:,, • (Sicily): •:,,,, •: (Ashkenazi), (Sephardic) • Kazakh folklore: •: •:, •: •: •:, • Mexican folklore: •: •: •: •: •: •: •: •:, •: •: • dancing: •: •: •: •:, •:, •: •: •: •:,, •:,, • mythology: •: See also [ ] • • 's • •, the traditional Brazilian folklore trickster. • • • References [ ]. • ^ Hyde, Lewis. Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth, and Art.

New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998. • Mattick, Paul (February 15, 1998).. New York Times. • Brown, Evan. The Bible in the Context of World Culture, Ch. 3 • Smith, R. • Lorde, Audre (2004).

'Age, Race, Class, and Sex'. In Rivkin, Julie; Ryan, Michael. Literary Theory: An Anthology. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

•, pp. 988–989. • ^ North, Michael, The Dialect of Modernism: Race, Language, and Twentieth-Century Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 77.

• ^ Brennan, Jonathan (2003). 'Introduction: Recognition of the African-Native American Literary Tradition'.

In Brennan, Jonathan. When Brer Rabbit Meets Coyote: African–Native American Literature. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. • Baringer, Sandra K. 'Brer Rabbit and His Cherokee Cousin: Moving Beyond the Appropriation Paradigm'.

In Brennan, Jonathan. When Brer Rabbit Meets Coyote: African–Native American Literature. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. • Byrd Gibbens, Professor of English at; quoted in by George Carlin, 2001 •, p. 21. • • Melhorn, Gary (2015). The Esoteric Codex: Shapeshifters. • Edmonds, Margot; Clark, Ella E.

Voices of the Winds: Native American Legends. Castle Books. • Campbell, J., Fletcher, G. & Greenhill, A. 'Tribalism, Conflict and Shape-shifting Identities in Online Communities.' In the Proceedings of the 13th Australasia Conference on Information Systems, Melbourne Australia, 7–9 December 2002 • Campbell, J., Fletcher, G. And Greenhill, A.

', Information Systems Journal, (19:5), pp. • Anti-Defamation League (2013). ' Sources [ ]. • Gates, Henry (2004), Julie Rivkin; Michael Ryan, eds., 'The Blackness of Blackness: A Critique on the Sign and the Signifying Monkey', Literary Theory: An Anthology, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing • Earl, Riggins R., Jr. Dark Symbols, Obscure Signs: God, Self, And Community In The Slave Mind. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books. • Bassil-Morozow, Helena (2011).

The Trickster in Contemporary Film. • Ballinger, Franchot; (1985). 'Sacred Reversals: Trickster in Gerald Vizenor's 'Earthdivers: Tribal Narratives on Mixed Descent '. American Indian Quarterly. 9 (1, The Literary Achievements of Gerald Vizenor): 55–59...

• Ballinger, Franchot (1991). 'Ambigere: The Euro-American Picaro and the Native American Trickster'.

17 (1, Native American Fiction: Myth and Criticism): 21–38... Bryce; Boyer, Ruth M. 'The Sacred Clown of the Chiricahua and Mescalero Apaches: Additional Data'.

Western Folklore. 42 (1): 46–54... • creation story • Joseph Durwin • Hansen, George P. The Trickster and the Paranormal. Philadelphia: Xlibris.. • Koepping, Klaus-Peter (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 1998 University of Pennsylvania Press • Paul Radin The trickster: a study in American Indian mythology (1956) • Allan J. Ryan 1999 Univ of Washington • Trickster's Way Volume 3, Issue 1 2004 Article 3 TRICKSTER AND THE TREKS OF HISTORY • Tannen, R. S., The Female Trickster: PostModern and Post-Jungian Perspectives on Women in Contemporary Culture, Routledge, 2007 External links [ ] •.

Technological Process and Infrastructure The process of converting the original Montel manuscript to a TEI-encoded document occurred in several stages. With permission from the director of Digital Initiatives and Services, I began by photographing each page of the Newberry Library’s manuscript. This stage in particular was more time consuming than it might have been if I had access to more resources. Given the cost to produce digital images through the Library, I opted to take the photos myself and was thus limited to the hours of the Newberry’s Special Collections Reading Room.

After collecting my images in JPEG format, I converted each to a PDF before beginning Optical Character Recognition (OCR) through Google Drive, which uses computer algorithms to convert images into text documents. Following the OCR process, I merged each of the text files into one working document and began cleaning errors from OCR, which commonly included missed apostrophes, lowercase “l”s changed to number “1”s, and exclamation marks replaced with colons. After minimizing the errors in my document, I worked with collaborators to create a markup schema that would make the text of Montel no longer just digital, but also machine-readable. In accordance with common practices in most digital humanities projects, we opted to use the, which provides standardized encoding practices for machine-readable texts in the humanities (TEI: Home). TEI is carried out using Extensible Markup Language (XML), a formal model based on “ordered hierarchies” (Birnbaum).

The use of “ordered hierarchies,” which are less formally known as trees, simply suggests there is a logic behind how a text is encoded (Birnbaum). For example: you can mark up chapters of a novel with tags to tell the computer that these chapters are smaller divisions of one source text. Within each tag, you can have tags to indicate individual paragraphs. Since the tag is a smaller element than a tag, tags must go within the tags; you cannot have a tag that encompasses anything outside of one set of tags.

Accordingly, if you encode one paragraph within a chapter, you also must encode every other paragraph within that chapter in order to have well-formed TEI and to indicate that each of the smaller elements (paragraphs) belong to a larger element (a chapter). With this understanding, XML is used for two primary reasons in the digital humanities: documents (like books) traditionally have a natural hierarchy, making it easy to map this onto the “ordered hierarchies” of XML; and computers can analyze and manipulate trees more efficiently than non-hierarchical texts (Birnbaum). The Gladys Fornell Project employs TEI for multiple reasons within the corpus of text. On one level, the markup functions structurally, such as in the example above, where it differentiates elements like paragraphs or renders all quoted speech with a uniform appearance. This structural markup inherently transforms the text from its original form, a typescript manuscript, to an interpretation of this manuscript, filtered through my own lens to weigh the importance of individual elements of the text. On a second level, the markup functions as interpretative analysis.

I created a series of with corresponding tags to make visible my interest in representations of femininity and their relationship with place in Montel. This was useful in allowing me examine the text categorically, e.g.

Separating “constraint” into “mechanical,” “clothing,” domestic,” and “literal,” but also challenging in the need to create categories and their more specific interpretations. While there could be some overlap between categories (for example: I have included under for both representations of femininity and religious icon) and a phrase can be encoded with multiple tags (marking up the phrase “[Alice] believed in God and in the Immaculate Conception” using the two aforementioned types of “angelic”), I was limited in my ability to weight these tags (the phrase is more an angelic representation of femininity than it is an angelic religious icon) and potentially clarify ambiguity in assigning a phrase to two broad categories.

The ability to categorize a phrase using multiple types, encoded in the corpus using, minimized the overall need for a weighted markup schema at this level of encoding. The final step in translating the TEI-encoded document to something that could be visible online was the use of, which allows for the file to be published on a web browser. Already having set up server space through the Ohio Five, I was able to download TEI Boilerplate files and include an XML declaration before the root of my file, thereby making my encoded document accessible through a browser. This TEI Boilerplate version of Montel is included as a page on the Gladys Fornell Project’s WordPress site, a self-hosted blogging tool chosen because of its user friendliness and customizable aesthetics.

Notes on editorial practices As with all projects that involve analyzing and synthesizing materials, this thesis has warranted numerous editorial decisions. These decisions were inherent to the project: beginning with one manuscript of Montel and no other drafts for points of comparison, I surmised that this novel was in one of its final drafts.

It is possible, however, that it incurred heavy revisions as Fornell corresponded with publisher Mark Patton, whose name and contact information is on the cover of the manuscript, suggesting that this was a copy returned from his office. Knowing the likelihood that multiple individuals looked over and made notes in the manuscript, this project grappled with decisions about marginalia. Were the typescript markings, unable to be easily distinguished as handwriting would be, suggestions on behalf of Patton or revisions inserted by Fornell? Given the low frequency of these markings and their seemingly unobtrusive changes to the text, I opted to preserve changes suggested in the manuscript’s marginalia, reasoning that these were either inserted by the author herself or agreed upon by author and publisher.

Additionally, there were several inconsistencies in the manuscript’s use of quotation marks and commas for dialogue. These types of inconsistencies or distinctions seemed intentional and thus did not regularize punctuation in the transcription unless marked with marginalia.

I did, however, regularize spelling when words were overtly misspelled or mistyped. When using TEI to encode the manuscript, I faced similar decisions about preserving the integrity of the original manuscript. Since markup inherently gives argument to a text, I often found myself questioning my editorial authority and how I weighted reader experience against Fornell’s possible, yet unknowable, intentions. For something as granular as quotation marks surrounding dialogue, there were inconsistencies.

Where most speech was surrounded by quotation marks, there were also passages that denoted speech with language like “Philip said,” but omitted quotation marks. Was there something distinct about these passages that warranted a different format? Could it just have been an inconsistency intended to be fixed in final edits? Did the button on Fornell’s typewriter physically jam and prevent her from adding quotation marks?

It is impossible to know which, if any, of these is the answer. However, being able to ask these questions and consider my own bias within the text reminds both myself and you, reader, that what you might see as an entirely objective presentation of Montel is not: it strives to be impartial, yet is innately tinted with the complexities of editorial decisions. Future research The current version of the Gladys Fornell Project allows for a number of continued lines of research.

Because the text of Montel is TEI-encoded, it can be further examined using a number of digital humanities tools. One interesting lens would be to use the tool, which utilizes computational statistics to analyze genre elements, authorship attribution, and style development.