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Coyote of Native American lore, Loki of Norse mythology, and numerous other manifestations of the trickster appear throughout human history. Spinks (English, Trinity U.) presents thirteen essays that are drawn from a 1999 symposium (sponsored by the Semiotic Society of America) devoted to the duality inherent in the archetype. Topics include the role of gender, the trickster role of the fool in the Tarot deck, the problem of seriousness and game playing in narratives, the trickster elements of Aztec time keeping and calendar making, and the revelation of the trickster in the non-happening of the computer Y2K problem. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Troubling Tricksters by Deanna Reder,Linda M. Morra Pdf
Troubling Tricksters is a collection of theoretical essays, creative pieces, and critical ruminations that provides a re-visioning of trickster criticism in light of recent backlash against it. The complaints of some Indigenous writers, the critique from Indigenous nationalist critics, and the changing of academic fashion have resulted in few new studies on the trickster. For example, The Cambridge Companion to Native American Literature (2005), includes only a brief mention of the trickster, with skeptical commentary. And, in 2007, Anishinaabe scholar Niigonwedom Sinclair (a contributor to this volume) called for a moratorium on studies of the trickster irrelevant to the specific experiences and interests of Indigenous nations. One of the objectives of this anthology is, then, to encourage scholarship that is mindful of the critic’s responsibility to communities, and to focus discussions on incarnations of tricksters in their particular national contexts. The contribution of Troubling Tricksters, therefore, is twofold: to offer a timely counterbalance to this growing critical lacuna, and to propose new approaches to trickster studies, approaches that have been clearly influenced by the nationalists’ call for cultural and historical specificity.
" . . . a first-rate piece of scholarship . . . an invaluable summary and commentary on the multilingual literature on [Bushman] people." —Choice The trickster and trance dancer are the guides through Bushman (or San) religion, a world of ambiguity and contradiction, and of enchantment. The two figures, who in Bushman belief are symbolically equivalent and mystically linked, embody these antistructural traits.
Author : Albrecht Classen Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG Page : 767 pages File Size : 46,8 Mb Release : 2017-10-23 Category : History ISBN : 9783110557725
Magic and Magicians in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Time by Albrecht Classen Pdf
There are no clear demarcation lines between magic, astrology, necromancy, medicine, and even sciences in the pre-modern world. Under the umbrella term 'magic,' the contributors to this volume examine a wide range of texts, both literary and religious, both medical and philosophical, in which the topic is discussed from many different perspectives. The fundamental concerns address issue such as how people perceived magic, whether they accepted it and utilized it for their own purposes, and what impact magic might have had on the mental structures of that time. While some papers examine the specific appearance of magicians in literary texts, others analyze the practical application of magic in medical contexts. In addition, this volume includes studies that deal with the rise of the witch craze in the late fifteenth century and then also investigate whether the Weberian notion of disenchantment pertaining to the modern world can be maintained. Magic is, oddly but significantly, still around us and exerts its influence. Focusing on magic in the medieval world thus helps us to shed light on human culture at large.
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.
Semiosis, Marginal Signs and Trickster by C.W. Spinks Pdf
As signifying creatures, we fear the false creation 'signifying nothing' because, like Macbeth, we think of them as daggers of the mind that raise questions about the reality of our signs, about signs as tools of creation and power, about the dark terrors (and lighter joys) that exist in human desire, and about the signs and the mind. This text argues that signs are, at base, generative things creating as much as they refer.
The Political Sociology and Anthropology of Evil: Tricksterology by Agnes Horvath,Arpad Szakolczai Pdf
This book offers a new approach to the problem of evil through an examination of the anthropological figure of the ‘trickster’. A lesser known and much more recent term than evil, the authors use the trickster to facilitate a greater understanding of the return of evil in the modern era. Instead of simply opposing ‘good’ and ‘evil’, the figure of the trickster is used to pursue the trajectories of similarities and quasi-similarities through imitation. After engaging with the trickster as presented in comparative anthropology and mythology, where it appears in tales and legends as a strange, erratic outsider, the authors seek to gain an inside perspective of trickster knowledge through an examination of mythology and the classical world, including both philosophers and poets. The book then goes on to trace the trickster through prehistory, using archaeological evidence to complement the diverse narratives. In this way, and by investigating the knowledge and customs surrounding evil, the authors use the figure of the trickster to provide an unprecedented diagnosis of the contemporary world, where external, mechanical rationality has become taken for granted and even considered as foundational in politics, economics, and technologised science. The authors advance the idea that the modern world, with its global free markets, mass mediatic democracy and technologised science, represents a universalisation of trickster logic. The Political Sociology and Anthropology of the Evil will be of interest to scholars working in the fields of social theory, political anthropology and political sociology, as well as those interested in the ways in which evil can infiltrate reality.
This volume represents a contribution to comparative scholarship in Medieval and Renaissance studies in its investigation of the ingenious diversity of roguish practices found in Medieval and Renaissance literature and its recognition of the coherent normative function of tales of tricksters and pranksters. The wide variety of works analysed, from those forming part of the established canon of texts on undergraduate degree schemes to lesser-known works, makes the volume of interest to students and researchers alike. The roguish behaviour of women, priests, foxes and outlaws and the knavery of Eulenspiegel and Panurge are used to illustrate how rituals of inversion and humiliation typical of the medieval carnival are reflected in literary accounts of trickery, and to question whether the restorative function attributed to carnival celebration is equally to be found in the intra-textual and extra-textual outcomes of trickery. This analysis is supported by studies into the trickster in mythology, sociological investigations into the role of disorder, Bakhtinian theories of carnival and the carnivalesque, and theories of black humour.
Character drives plot. Based on this principle, this book walks aspiring writers through the fascinating world of character-driven screenwriting. When a writer engages their characters, they start a process which naturally leads to the story’s structure and everything else that makes for a well-written narrative. Exploring the protagonist’s journey and their “unity arc,” Myers explains how a family of characters surrounds the protagonist and influences their transformation process. This easy-to-follow guide features activities that will help writers of any level develop their stories from concept to scene-by-scene outline. Based upon a popular workshop Myers has led with over a thousand writers at all levels of experience, this book is a must-have for screenwriting students, both undergraduate and graduate, and those looking at advanced story development.
Sally Porterfield,Keith Polette,Tita French Baumlin
Author : Sally Porterfield,Keith Polette,Tita French Baumlin Publisher : State University of New York Press Page : 241 pages File Size : 50,5 Mb Release : 2015-05-11 Category : Social Science ISBN : 9781438428031
Perpetual Adolescence by Sally Porterfield,Keith Polette,Tita French Baumlin Pdf
Arguing that American culture appeals to and is populated by children and adolescents who merely appear to be adult men and women, the essays in Perpetual Adolescence examine the Jungian archetype of the "eternal youth"—the puer aeternus—as it is manifested in the arrested development of American culture. From the infantilization of the American psyche and the lionization of teenaged celebrities and bodies, to fanatical conformity, and puerile entertainment, the contributors probe the various ways that American television, music, film, print, Internet, education, and social movements work to nourish and sustain this child archetype. Offering analytic psychology as an instrument of social analysis and critique, they point to the need for dialogue over the causes and effects of our puer-fixations, which have become, in large part, both a creation and a creator of the American zeitgeist.
Exploring what the author calls the "shaman-poets"—Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, and Emily Dickinson—this book demonstrates how far ahead of their times these writers were in forecasting developments of our current time. It was Whitman who first wrote of "Spiritual Democracy" as a vision of transformation and global equality. Steven Herrmann delves deep into the visionary expressions of this idea of Spiritual Democracy—"the realization of the oneness of humanity with the universe and all its forces"—in these early American writers, showing the influence the groundbreaking work of the geologist and thinker Alexander Von Humboldt had on Whitman and others. Writing that every member of the global community regardless of color, gender, or sexual orientation can realize these freedoms, the author explores how one can tap into the vitalizing source of equalizing, vocational energy to bring a sense of purpose and peace. Although the book shines as a work of literary criticism, the author's insights as a Jungian psychotherapist take the reader ever deeper into the creative impulses of Whitman, Melville, Dickinson, and other poets in their crafting of the seminal notion of Spiritual Democracy. In addition, Herrmann offers practical methodologies for personal and global transformation in the section, "Ten Ways to Practice Spiritual Democracy." Table of Contents Visions of Spiritual Democracy - Introduction 1. Cosmos 2. Spiritual Democracy as a Science of God 3. From Humboldt to Jung 4. Jung on Spiritual Democracy 5. Healing the National Complex 6. Whitman's "New Bible": The Foundation of a Religious Vision 7. Walt Whitman's Global Vision 8. The Bi-Erotic as Transcendent Sexuality 9. Shamanism and Spiritual Democracy: A Post-Humboldtian Notion of the Cosmos 10. Whitman as a Preserver of the Psychic Integrity of the Community 11. Moby Dick: The Evolution of a New Myth for our Times 12. Herman Melville: The Quest for Yillah 13. Towards a Hypothesis of the Bi-erotic 14. Moby Dick and the Trickster 15. The Marriage of Sames: "A Bosom Friend" 16. Moby Dick: The Characters Behind the Names 17. The Fall of the Dictatorships as Portrayed in Moby Dick 18. Metamorphosis of the Gods 19. The Re-emergence of the Feminine 20. Afterward: A Bi-Erotic Model for The Way Forward a) Ten Ways to Practice Spiritual Democracy
The Joker by Robert Moses Peaslee,Robert G. Weiner Pdf
Along with Batman, Spider-Man, and Superman, the Joker stands out as one of the most recognizable comics characters in popular culture. While there has been a great deal of scholarly attention on superheroes, very little has been done to understand supervillains. This is the first academic work to provide a comprehensive study of this villain, illustrating why the Joker appears so relevant to audiences today. Batman’s foe has cropped up in thousands of comics, numerous animated series, and three major blockbuster feature films since 1966. Actually, the Joker debuted in DC comics Batman 1 (1940) as the typical gangster, but the character evolved steadily into one of the most ominous in the history of sequential art. Batman and the Joker almost seemed to define each other as opposites, hero and nemesis, in a kind of psychological duality. Scholars from a wide array of disciplines look at the Joker through the lens of feature films, video games, comics, politics, magic and mysticism, psychology, animation, television, performance studies, and philosophy. As the first volume that examines the Joker as complex cultural and cross-media phenomenon, this collection adds to our understanding of the role comic book and cinematic villains play in the world and the ways various media affect their interpretation. Connecting the Clown Prince of Crime to bodies of thought as divergent as Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche, contributors demonstrate the frightening ways in which we get the monsters we need.
We hope—even as we doubt—that the environmental crisis can be controlled. Public awareness of our species’ self-destructiveness as material beings in a material world is growing—but so is the destructiveness. The practical interventions needed for saving and restoring the earth will require a collective shift of such magnitude as to take on a spiritual and religious intensity. This transformation has in part already begun. Traditions of ecological theology and ecologically aware religious practice have been preparing the way for decades. Yet these traditions still remain marginal to society, academy, and church. With a fresh, transdisciplinary approach, Ecospirit probes the possibility of a green shift radical enough to permeate the ancient roots of our sensibility and the social sources of our practice. From new language for imagining the earth as a living ground to current constructions of nature in theology, science, and philosophy; from environmentalism’s questioning of postmodern thought to a garden of green doctrines, rituals, and liturgies for contemporary religion, these original essays explore and expand our sense of how to proceed in the face of an ecological crisis that demands new thinking and acting. In the midst of planetary crisis, they activate imagination, humor, ritual, and hope.
Comedy and Feminist Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible by Melissa Jackson Pdf
Comedy is both relative, linked to a time and culture, and universal, found pervasively across time and culture. The Hebrew Bible contains comedy of this relative, yet universal nature. Melissa A. Jackson engages the Hebrew Bible via a comic reading and brings that reading into conversation with feminist-critical interpretation, in resistance to any lingering stereotype that comedy is fundamentally non-serious or that feminist critique is fundamentally unsmiling. Dividing comic elements into categories of literary devices, psychological/social features, and psychological/social function, Jackson examines the narratives of a number of biblical characters for evidence of these comic elements. The characters include the trickster matriarchs, the women involved in the infancy of Moses, Rahab, Deborah and Jael, Delilah, three of David's wives (Michal, Abigail, Bathsheba), Jezebel, Ruth, and Esther. Nine particularly instructive points of contact between comedy and feminist interpretation emerge: both (1) resist definition, (2) exist amidst a self/other, subject/object dichotomy, (3) emphasise and utilise context, (4) promote creativity, (5) acknowledge the concept of distancing, (6) work towards revelation, (7) are subversive, (8) are concerned with containment and control, and (9) enable survival. The use of comedy as an interpretive lens for the Hebrew Bible is not without difficulties for feminist interpretation. While maintaining an uncomfortable, even painful, awareness of the hold patriarchy retains on the Hebrew Bible, feminist critics can still choose to allow comedy's revelatory, subversive, survivalist nature to do its work revealing, subverting, and surviving.