9/9/2023 0 Comments Tricksters![]() ![]() ![]() I want to separate clearly the creative depiction of figures such as Coyote and Nanabush from literary criticism about “the trickster”. I have therefore revised the original piece to give a sense of how the critical treatment of the trickster has fit into and reflected the developing study of Indigenous literature, from the 1990s to the present. I also realized that these problems have since then been articulated and begun to be addressed by the movement known as Indigenous (or American Indian) Literary Nationalism. Unsatisfied with much of the critical work on the trickster, I critiqued it in a section of my dissertation entitled,”What's the Trouble with the Trickster”? As I recently re-read that piece, I could see, in retrospect, the ways in which the troubles in the trickster criticism of the 1990s reflected broader problems in the study of Native literature at that time. As a result, the critics' trickster became an entity so vague it could serve just about any argument. The trouble was that the trickster archetype was assumed to be an inevitable part of Indigenous cultures, and so the criticism paid little attention to the historical and cultural specifics of why and how particular Indigenous writers were drawing on particular mythical figures. Focusing on the trickster seemed to appeal to literary critics as an approach that was fittingly “Native”. At that time, the trickster was a particularly trendy topic among critics and it seemed, as Craig Womack recently put it, that “there were tricksters in every teapot” (“Integrity” 19). My first encounter with trickster figures had been in the late 1990s when I was writing my dissertation on humour in Indigenous literature in Canada. I must admit that, when first asked to contribute to this collection of essays on the trickster, I was apprehensive. Morraįrom What's the Trouble with the Trickster? An Introduction by Kristina Fagan Excerpt from Troubling Tricksters: Revisioning Critical Conversations edited by Deanna Reder and Linda M. ![]()
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