Gender in Trickster Tales

Masaryk University Faculty of Arts

Department of English and American Studies

English Language and Literature

Mgr. Alena Gašparovičová

Gender in Trickster Tales

Master’s Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: Jeffrey Alan Vanderziel, B.A.

2020

I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

…………………………………………….. Author’s signature

I would like to thank my supervisor, Jeffrey Alan Vanderziel, B.A. for his patience and valuable advice. I would also like to thank my friends and my family for their support.

Contents Introduction ...... 5 1. What is a Trickster Figure ...... 9 2. The Most Common Trickster Traits ...... 12 2. 1 Where the Trickster Got His Name: Trickery ...... 12 2. 2 Appetite ...... 14 2. 3 Creativity and Destructivity ...... 17 2. 4 Forming the World ...... 20 2. 5 Wandering ...... 21 2. 6 Crossing the Boundaries ...... 22 2. 7 Imitating ...... 25 2. 8 Shapeshifting ...... 26 3. The Roles of Trickster Tales in Native American Cultures ...... 27 4. Trickster Figures and Gender ...... 29 4. 1 Hermes ...... 35 4. 2 Loki ...... 36 4. 3 Esu-Elegbara ...... 39 4. 4 Summary ...... 41 5. Gender in Native American Myths ...... 44 5. 1 The Trickster: A Study in American Indian Mythology – A Case of Changing Sex and Gender ...... 52 5. 2 Tewa Tales – Examples of Female Tricksters ...... 59 5. 3 Summary ...... 65 Conclusion ...... 68 Works Cited: ...... 71 Summary ...... 77 Resumé ...... 78

Introduction

The aim of this thesis is to analyse how gender is portrayed in trickster myths, with the focus on the trickster myths of the Native American cultures. For this purpose, two collections of Native American myths will be analysed, each of which features a distinctive and well-known trickster figure. These collections will be Paul Radin’s

Winnebago trickster cycle The Trickster: A Study in American Indian Mythology and

Elsie Clews Parsons’ collection Tewa Tales.

This will be accomplished through a qualitative analysis of the three aforementioned collections of myths. The focus of the analysis will be the representation of gender in these trickster cycles. This will be partially achieved by looking at how trickster figures adhere to gender expectations. Another important part of the gender analysis will be the examination of female tricksters as these tend to be frequently marginalised in analyses of trickster tales.

These two collections have been selected as each of them comes from a different region and centres around a different well-known trickster figure. Radin’s book The

Trickster: A Study in American Indian Mythology remains one of the most influential works on the trickster figure in Native American myths. It features the Winnebago tricksters Wakdjunkaga and Hare. It contains not only two cycles of Winnebago trickster tales but also Radin’s own analysis of the trickster myths as well as critical essays on trickster figures by C. G. Jung and Karl Kerényi. Elsie Clews Parsons’ collection features myths from the Tewa people from various regions of the American southwest. The collections will be supplemented by selected stories from Franz Boas’ Keresan Texts, which also feature a Coyote trickster and certain episodes are variations of those that can be found in Parsons’ Tewa Tales, and stories from Richard Erdoes’ and Alfonso Ortiz’ American Indian Myths and Legends as these supplementary texts will stress out some of the essential aspects of the portrayal of gender in the two primary texts. The analysis will be supported by a range of secondary sources which include, but are not limited to,

Lewis Hyde’s book Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth, and Art; Lewis Gates’

The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African American Literary; or the collection of essays on trickster figures Mythical Trickster Figures: Contours, Contexts, and

Criticisms edited by William Hynes and William Doty.

Trickster myths enjoy a unique and widespread position among mythologies all over the world that only a few mythical motives seem to have. Therefore, trickster myths have been subjected to critical analyses by many scholars interested in cultural or literary studies. They are notoriously hard to categorise in any aspect, however, despite that for a very long time, many scholars have labelled tricksters as predominantly male. This categorisation is unfortunate as it reduces the discussion of gender in trickster tales to the biological sex of the tricksters and marginalises subtler crossings of the gender line such as cross-dressing or expected behaviour. Moreover, it has resulted in a tendency to dismiss episodes where tricksters change their biological sex and in very little discussion of tricksters who are biologically female. The issue of gender has become more important in recent decades, as the development in feminist studies has caused women to be more interested in the position of women in literature, including myths. In more recent works, a larger tendency to discuss gender in various myths has arisen and many scholars have started paying more attention to gender transgressions and to look for female tricksters who have been overlooked. This thesis will attempt to connect these newer works on gender in trickster tales with the discussion of gender in Native American myths. The thesis will be divided into five chapters. The first chapter will attempt to delimit what a trickster figure is and why is it problematic to define this archetype. The second chapter will feature short descriptions of the most typical traits trickster figures, which seem to be shared by trickster figures from most of the world cultures. Although tricksters are notoriously difficult to define as an archetype because each trickster figure is unique, there seems to be a pattern of behaviours and traits that seem to pertain to most trickster figures and therefore could be considered typical traits of these characters. The chapter will be divided into eight subchapters, each of which will focus on one of the traits that are widespread among trickster figures and thus can be considered typical for tricksters. These traits will be described, along with examples of how they can manifest in different trickster tales.

The third chapter will then explore the roles of trickster tales in Native American cultures. It will focus on the various kinds of impact trickster tales can have on people, such as being educative materials or their entertaining qualities to show why these tales are crucial parts of these cultures.

After that, a chapter on gender in trickster tales from various parts of the world will follow. This chapter will contain examples from different cultures of the whole world to demonstrate how gender works in trickster tales. Three well-known trickster figures from Europe and Africa will be discussed in terms of gender representation. These tricksters will be the Greek trickster-god Hermes, the Germanic trickster Loki and the

African Yoruba trickster Esu. These three trickster figures have been chosen as they are all well-known around the world and therefore are good representatives of trickster figures in general. Each of these trickster figures will be shortly described in terms of how they manifest the trickster traits and why they are considered tricksters. After that, they will be analysed in terms of how gender is portrayed in connection with these tricksters. The chapter will be divided into four subchapters. Each of the three tricksters will be analysed in a separate subchapter and the last one will feature a short summary of the main points.

The last chapter will feature an analysis of gender in Native American trickster tales. This will include examining issues like the phenomenon cross-gender dressing, which is relatively common in trickster tales, trickster figures in their relationship to gender expectations or female tricksters. This chapter will be divided into three subchapters. In the first subchapter, the portrayal of gender in Radin’s The Trickster: A

Study in American Indian Mythology will be discussed. The following subchapter will feature an analysis of gender in Elsie Clews Parsons’ Tewa Tales with a special focus on female tricksters that appear in some of the stories in this collection. Each of these two subchapters will feature a short description of how these characters fit into the trickster category, and then they will be analysed in terms of how gender is portrayed in the myths.

Also, some of the myths featuring female tricksters will be analysed with the aim of ascertaining which traits are typical to these as opposed to their male counterparts and why they are so rare. The chapter will be concluded with a short summary. It should be taken into consideration that due to the great variety of Native American myths, this thesis will not cover all the existing mythologies and therefore, conclusions drawn might not apply to other myths.

1. What is a Trickster Figure

“More has probably been written about ‘tricksters’ than about any other single category of character that appears in the myths and folktales of the world” (Carroll 105).

Trickster is a character archetype which can be found in seemingly all mythologies around the world. As such, it is a fascinating but also very baffling study subject for scholars interested in various areas of culture or literature. Since this figure is so widespread, it very challenging to create a definition that would fit all the trickster figures in every respect as each trickster is unique. Another problem arises from the problem of delimiting, which character classifies as a trickster as sometimes “scholars tend to use an extremely broad definition of the trickster itself, in that they tend to apply this term to any character who makes extensive use of deceit” (Carroll 105), while other scholars tend to limit this term only to certain characters. Therefore, it is problematic to define which character qualifies as a trickster and which as a character who has some trickster-like traits.

Trickster figures are “uniquely complex, ambivalent creatures” (Phelan 134) who are full of contradictions. As Barbara Babcock-Abrahams describes them: “No generation understands him fully but no generation can do without him. Each had to include him in all its theologies, in all its cosmogonies, despite the fact that it realised that he did not fit properly into any of them” (163). However, the complexity of all the different trickster figures and their individual variations make it impossible to draw conclusions about trickster figures that would be universally applicable to all of them or even to all versions of one trickster figure. Considering how widespread this character is, it stands to reason that the individual trickster figures would differ from one another in at least some details.

Moreover, each of these characters is unique, and therefore there is an academic disagreement as to whether the individual trickster figures can be seen as one character archetype which can appear in many versions or rather a set of various individual characters which share some common traits. Similarly, there are debates whether these characters can be studied across a variety of cultures simultaneously or each trickster figure should be studied separately in the context of the culture that created this figure.

For the purpose of this thesis, trickster figure will be considered a type of character with many variations, and tricksters will be analysed comparatively in relationship to one another.

The diversity of trickster figures also causes diversity in the roles these characters are capable of having in all the different myths vary. Some tricksters are portrayed as fools who trick other beings to get whatever they need at the moment to satisfy their own selfish needs. They are:

‘selfish-buffoon’—‘selfish’ because so much of the trickster's activity is oriented

toward the gratification of his enormous appetites for food and sex, and ‘buffoon’

because the elaborate deceits that the trickster devises in order to satisfy these

appetites so often backfire and leave the trickster looking incredibly foolish.

(Carroll 106)

This can often lead to unfortunate consequences which are not necessarily suffered by the tricksters themselves, very frequently humans, gods or other beings have to pay for the tricksters’ mistakes instead of the trickster. The consequences of such tricks can go as far as to the end of the world. This is, for example, true for the Germanic trickster Loki, who sets a chain of events into motion that eventually results in Ragnarök.

Other times, tricksters can trick others and do something beneficial for humanity.

In these stories, a trickster figure becomes the “clever hero” a type of character who “consistently outwits stronger opponents” (Carroll 106) or perform similar services for other beings that require them to use their wits to achieve what they need. There are many trickster stories, where tricksters are the ones providing people with tools and resources which are critical for their survival. They are also sometimes credited with slaying numerous monsters no other being is capable of defeating. However, tricksters are able to trick these beings with their cunning and kill them.

This inconsistency in the portrayal of trickster figures as being very clever at some points and being a complete fool other times can be seen even in one character. Radin tries to explain this inconsistency as the result of various narratives merging into one over time using trickster cycles from several Native American cultures as examples and demonstrating on the Tlingit Raven that “there is a complete break between Trickster conceived of as a divine being and as a true transformer of the world and the Trickster whose actions have no purpose and who behaves like a fool” (160). This notion that this contradiction in the tricksters’ nature becomes even more plausible when considering that many cultures have two separate characters with trickster-traits, one of whom is a complete fool while the other one is a hero. “While in some societies both attributes are, as mentioned, combined in a single figure, in some there is a division into pure culture- hero and purely secular trickster” (Babcock-Abrahams 162). However, while this may explain, at least partially, the contradictive nature, as it will be seen in the following chapters, there are still many other aspects of this figure that make it difficult to define and understand.

2. The Most Common Trickster Traits

As it was mentioned earlier, each trickster figure is unique, and frequently even one trickster can have different traits in each variant of a specific myth, or the tricksters’ traits can differ regionally. Therefore, it is not possible to create a universal definition that would fit all the trickster figures. However, there are some traits which seem to be typical for these figures and are shared by most of the well-known trickster figures.

Therefore, these traits could be considered important “typical” trickster traits and could be used for the differentiation of tricksters from other mythical characters.

2. 1 Where the Trickster Got His Name: Trickery

The trickster gets his name from an activity he does frequently – trick others.

Trickster figures lie, cheat and steal from others on a regular basis. Usually, this is not done out of some desire to be cruel or to hurt others, but rather from a complete lack of consideration for others, especially when the other characters stand between the trickster and what the trickster desires.

This necessarily means that others are hurt by the tricksters’ conduct. However, tricksters are not bothered by the consequences of their actions: “Trickster does not feel anxiety when he deceives” (Hyde 71). Because they do not have a bad conscience, when they trick others, tricksters are very often equalled with the devil by some theoreticians.

However, this should be avoided as the trickster is a different figure. The devil is an entirely evil character who willingly acts in a manner that causes some damage to others.

The trickster, on the other hand, is “amoral, not immoral” (Hyde 10). The trickster figures are not good or bad by their nature. They are rather selfish characters and often cause problems or hurt others just because they do not know any better. And as long as the consequences do not befall them directly, they tend to be unbothered by them, no matter how many others have to suffer, because of the tricksters’ actions.

Usually, the motivation for the tricksters’ behaviour is their appetite. It motivates them to try to get it satisfied by any means necessary. A good example is the Winnebago trickster Wakdjunkaga, who fools mother racoons into leaving their young ones with him and subsequently kills the young ones and eats them (Radin The Trickster 29). Instead of feeling ashamed about ending the young racoon lives, he enlists the help of a skunk to catch the mothers as well so he can eat them too. In the course of a few episodes,

Wakdjunkaga manages to trick the mothers twice and satisfying his hunger on them as well as their children. However, as the trickster’s appetite is insatiable, he soon embarks on another journey and soon needs to eat yet again.

The success of his tricks varies. Sometimes the trickster manages to achieve what he wants, such as in the case of the racoons, however, very frequently his tricks also backfire at him at the trickster ends up getting hurt – or even killed. The consequences are not always for the trickster to suffer, they can also be suffered by other beings that are dependent on the trickster, such as his family or even human beings.

Other times, this works the other way around, and they accidentally end up helping others, while trying to satisfy their desires, they “are very often self-seekers, whose deeds have only incidentally contributed to man's comfort as well as to their own”

(Lowie 431). At different occasions, they manage to improve the world through their actions willingly. Quite frequently they are also culture heroes, who rid the world of a dangerous monster by tricking and subsequently killing it. Alternatively, they can benefit human beings by tricking gods into improving the lot for humanity. When Prometheus gives Zeus two piles to choose from what will be sacrificed to gods, he makes sure that the pile containing meat would look worse, so Zeus will choose the pile of bones as the sacrificial object instead, and people can keep the meat. Doty suggests an alternative reading of this story which shows Prometheus in a much less favourable light, however, still shows him as a trickster figure.

On the other side of the tricking/being tricked dualism is the foolish trickster. This one is frequently tricked by others and loses what he has gained by trickery or even gets himself killed. A version of this myth can be found in the Tewa Mythology, where Coyote is fooled by the Turkey. When Coyote sets off for a hunt, he encounters a Turkey, who offers himself to be cooked. However, as Coyote sends Turkey to his wife to have him cooked, Turkey lies to her and tells her that Coyote wants her to cook sinew and “Turkey flew far away” (Parsons 162). In the end, Coyote realises that he has been tricked.

However, it is too late to do anything about it. The Turkey tricks the trickster and not only does the trickster not get the food he wanted, but he also loses the sinew for his moccasins. While it is true that tricksters are known for tricking others, it should not be forgotten that as very ambiguous characters, they can also be tricked themselves.

2. 2 Appetite

Closely linked to tricking other beings is another trickster trait, which seems to pertain to most trickster figures, the insatiable appetite. Appetite is the most frequent reason for all of the tricksters’ cunning and lying; Hyde even asserts that it seems that “if trickster were free of all appetite he would no longer be a trickster” (Hyde 63). A trickster’s appetite is the main driving force of many of the tricks, lies and deceits as it is insatiable. Tricksters tend to get very creative when they are considering the ways to get to what they desire. There are numerous examples of tricksters tricking others to steal their victims’ food or downright lying and killing their unwitting victims, so there will be something to eat. The story, which has been mentioned earlier is a telling example of how the appetite rules the trickster’s life. Wakdjunkaga tricks a pair of mothers to leave their children with him, and then he kills and eats the children. In the end, he shows no remorse at his actions merely commenting that: “‘Now is time that I will eat some fat,’ he said”

(Radin The Trickster 31). He does not seem to be sorry about the pain he has caused to the mothers and merely comes to regard them as another source of food.

The desire for food is what frequently differentiates tricksters from deities.

Several scholars note on how tricksters being ruled by their appetites sets them apart from gods, sometimes even stands between them and their divine heritage. A famous example of a trickster who manages to escape the perils of a hungry belly is the Greek trickster god Hermes. Even though he starts as a typical hungry trickster killing a turtle and eating its’ marrow, he does manage to get his hunger under control eventually. He steals cattle from his half-brother Apollo and kills it. However, at this point, he resists the urge to eat it and sacrifices it instead. Here he moves from “incarnate life (meat one actually eats) to symbolic or mental life (meat made to stand for something else)” (Hyde 59), establishing himself as one of the Olympian deities.

Examples of hunger being seen as a non-deity trait can be found in Native

American myths as well. In the northern regions, the trickster takes on the form of Raven.

“‘Raven Becomes Voracious’ is a story of descent. In heaven, there are beings who do not eat; in this lower world of stomachs and fish there are mortals who eat constantly”

(Hyde 25). He starts as a “shining youth” (Radin The Trickster 163), a gift from gods given to grieving parents. He eats “practically nothing” (Radin The Trickster

163). However, his parents have two servants who eat their own shin-scabs. Once Raven tries to do the same out of curiosity, he becomes voracious. His adoptive parents love him, so they try to support their hungry son but to no avail. He is too hungry to hungry for them to be able to keep up providing him with what he needs. “The island on which the boy’s parents live lies between heaven and earth” (Hyde 25). Therefore, they send him to a different world where he will be able to get enough food for himself. “Raven travels from heaven to the world of the animal tribe, and then he travels from that world to this one, where appetite has no end and where the berries and fish have no end” (Hyde

25). These two examples show that the need for food is something non-divine, connected with mortals. While the tricksters are not mortal in the same way human beings are, as long as they are governed by their appetite, they cannot belong to the higher sphere, to the gods either. As Radin points out in his analysis of Native American myths, in Native

American cycles, there is frequently a gap between the moment when a single trickster figure behaves like a culture hero or even a deity and the moment, he becomes a complete buffoon, who is governed by his bodily needs. In this context, this Raven myth could be seen as an attempt to provide a link between these two trickster roles, and appetite would then be the catalyst for this transition.

Because trickster figures tend to have various roles in the individual myths, their roles in the food chain differ as well. While at some points they are the dangerous deceivers and come up with elaborate ways how to catch their prey, at other times, they are themselves at risk of being caught: “In all these stories, trickster must do more than feed his belly; he must do so without himself getting eaten” (Hyde 22). Hyde offers an example where the Tlingit trickster Raven loses his beak and nearly gets himself caught by a fisherman whose bait he is trying to steal. Appetite does not necessarily mean the desire to eat; sexual appetite seems to be just as common among tricksters. In trickster myths “lust is his primary characteristic”

(Radin The Trickster 135). When it comes to having intercourse with the person they desire, tricksters behave in the same manner as when they want food – creatively with complete lack of concern for anybody else and any rules that might break along the way.

A good example of this is the Tewa trickster Coyote, who challenges Badger to prove which one is a better hunter with the reward being the option to spend the night with the wife of the other one. Coyote loses the wager, and so his wife has to pay for “his stupidity”

(Erdoes and Ortiz 369). In another widely-spread story, Coyote goes as far as

“[perverting] his father's role” (Ballinger “Coyote, He/She Was Going There” 24) when he fakes his own death to marry and have sex with his daughter, something which is considered taboo. Wakdjunkaga does not escape sexual appetite either. In one of the episodes, he sends his penis across a body if water to have sexual intercourse with the daughter of a chief, who was having a bath. The episode about “sending of the penis across the water … is well known in North America” (Radin The Trickster 135-6) further showing how important this trait is in trickster tales. As this trait also pertains to the way gender is portrayed in Native American myths, this trait will be further discussed in the section on gender in trickster tales.

2. 3 Creativity and Destructivity

As it was mentioned before, tricksters can get very creative when it comes to getting what they want. Usually what they want is to satisfy their appetite and therefore

“[it] seems to require, then, that we connect trickster’s inventive cunning to the body’s needs” (Hyde 63). Sometimes this creativity simply takes the form of a creative lie that allows the trickster access to food. However, tricksters are willing to go to great lengths to get their hunger satisfied, and this can lead to the creation of tools that would allow them to catch food easier: “invention arises precisely where artifice and hunger are knit to one another” (Hyde 63). With their creativity is also often linked the tricksters’ best- known invention – the trap. More than one trickster is credited to be the inventor of the trap: “No trickster has ever been credited with inventing a potato peeler, a gas meter, a catechism, or a tuning fork, but trickster invents the fish trap” (Hyde 18). While all the other items might be useful to others, these tools would not allow the tricksters immediate access to food, and therefore there is no reason for a trickster to create these. In the

Winnebago cycle, Wakdjunkaga’s “first act of trickery” is the “trapping and killing an old buffalo” (Babcock-Abrahams 177), showing how important this trickster trait is.

Because of their natural association with changing rules, they need to be present when some sort of order is to be established: “In times of cultural change, the trickster is not only present, but also one of the most active agents of that change” (Grădinaru 87).

His intervention is not always deliberate, but they are always significant for the result. In some mythologies, the trickster figure is responsible for the flood of the whole world, which necessitates the change of the landscape. Although the flood may be caused accidentally, the change to the landscape stays permanent, thus the trickster’s actions change the world.

Another type of trickster creativity can be found in the hero-type of tricksters.

These are frequently credited with getting the coming generations essential things for life, for example, fire or light. This is usually achieved by tricking some higher being, which has been monopolising that resource and sharing it with the rest of the world. The Tlingit

Raven brings light to the world by becoming the child of the owner’s daughter. He then “[crawls] around back of the people weeping continually” and points to “the bundles”

(Swanton) where light is kept until he manages to get them and spread the light around.

Thus, Raven manages to use his creativity in a manner that allows him to benefit everybody, not just himself.

Just like every trickster’s trait creativity is two-sided as well. “He does represent both a creative and a destructive force” (Scheub 33); while tricksters are certainly capable of creating, they are also undoubtedly capable of destroying. This “creative/destructive dualism” (Babcock-Abrahams 160) is very important, because no matter how dire the consequences might be for the whole world, the changes are also necessary, so the world does not stagnate. There are boundaries that limit humans, and sometimes even gods:

But in the trickster tale, those boundaries are loosened, violated; the power of the

gods, of the great animals, is called into question, and chaos results. The great

traditions laid down by the mighty are transgressed, and there is a reversal. Now

the traditional world is called into question, authority is undermined. Traditional

sources of power are confounded. (Scheub 7)

Furthermore, if something that no one is willing to do must be done in order for the change to happen, the amoral, unbound-by-rules trickster figures are the ideal being to instigate that change. They bring around the change that the world needs; “[they] have a magical affinity with chaos that might allow them to serve as scapegoats on behalf of order” (Babcock-Abrahams 153-4). Even though they might be sometimes villainised for their actions, the existence of world order is only possible because of their actions against it.

However, no matter how important the changes the trickster figure instigate in the world, they should never not be mistaken with the creators of the world. This role is taken up by a different, more powerful deity. Kerényi stresses this with Wakdjunkaga. While this trickster is very important and sacred to the people: “Even his loyal Winnebagos have never believed that, Wakdjunkaga, the creator of a literature, could be the creator of a world” (Kerényi 191). Trickster helps to form the world into its current shape – both in a good and a bad way, however, he does not create it.

2. 4 Forming the World

While the tricksters usually are not the creators of the world per se, they play a pivotal role in forming the world into its present shape. Be it consciously of by accident when crossing the boundaries, destroys the established order and causes that a new order needs to be devised. “He is always reinventing the world, testing boundaries, relearning the possibilities” (Scheub 6). Because of their creativity tricksters frequently take an important part in forming the world into the current shape.

This change is not always for the better, and the consequences are not always suffered by the trickster who caused the problem in the first place, but by someone else.

Very frequently, tricksters are responsible for something good being removed from the world. In Radin’s Trickster, the trickster Hare is left in charge of the magical house with the instructions that he must not wish “the same thing four times in succession” (Radin

85), and he may under no circumstances “hurt the woman who lives [in the house and] is in charge of all these things” (Radin 85). As long as he follows the rules, he can have whatever he wants. However, Hare is incapable of following the rules of how this power should be used and breaks them immediately and loses that power. In more extreme cases, the trickster breaking the rules can lead to the existence of death, as is the case with Coyote or with the complete end of the world, which is the consequence of Loki’s conduct in the Germanic cycle Edda.

In other cases, tricksters can also change the world for the sake of thwarting the plans of the gods. This is the case of the Navajo Coyote, who comes to the great assembly, where the order of the world is being decided, uninvited. He thwarts the plans on purpose out revenge for not being invited. He disrupts the order the other being want to bring about for example, by adding “extra days” (O’Bryan) into some months and making the numbers of days of individual moths uneven, and while this may seem petty, it also shows how trickster figure protect the world from too much order without the flexibility of rules.

Generally, their actions can have both a useful as well as a harmful effect at the world.

As it can be seen, tricksters’ trespasses will frequently lead to something being destroyed.

However, every time something is destroyed, something else needs to take the empty space, so at the same time, something new needs to be created. Therefore, tricksters are responsible for keeping the world moving forward and preventing it from stagnating.

2. 5 Wandering

Another very typical trickster trait is that tricksters tend to be wanderers. They move from one place to another either on their own account or because they are forced away by other beings or the circumstances. As Barbara Babcock-Abrahams points out, the wandering might be the consequence of trickster’s conduct: “he violates rules or boundaries, thereby necessitating escape and forcing himself to again wander aimlessly”

(177). Frequently tricksters end up wandering after they escape being killed by someone else because the trickster’s actions have hurt that being or their loved ones. In Radin’s cycle, there is a whole episode devoted to Wakdjunkaga swimming around aimlessly in a sea, because he jumped into the water to save his life and is unable to find his way back to the shore.

Other times, they might end up wandering around because there is nothing better to do; they would like to do than wander and ideally stumble upon something to eat or simply for the sake of wandering around.

2. 6 Crossing the Boundaries

As it can be noted in previous sections, tricksters tend to manifest an “indignity of any closed system” (Babcock 103), and therefore, they can be often found transgressing any boundary they can. As William J. Hynes has pointed out in his chapter on trickster traits, trickster figures tend to dwell in the marginal spaces (in Hynes and

Doty 35). They are often connected with any possible kind of border and they “tend to inhabit crossroads, open public places (especially the marketplace), doorways, and thresholds. In one way or another they are usually situated between the social cosmos and the other world or chaos” (Babcock-Abrahams 159). It is no coincidence that tricksters inhabit these places. They are very ambiguous as characters; they combine opposite traits, and, in some cases, they can be of a combined “impure” (Hynes and Doty 39) birth.

Therefore, it is hardly a surprise that they also inhibit the space somewhere in-between and cross over boundaries others cannot cross.

The boundaries can be both a physical and metaphorical ones. One of the more physical boundaries they cross very frequently is the boundary between two different worlds, for example, between the divine land of gods and the land of mortals. There is a reoccurring motif of various trickster figures creating this boundary in the first place. Frequently, gods used to live among mortals, however, the tricksters’ behaviour forced them to move to a separate realm. Belonging neither completely to deities nor to human beings, they are often capable of crossing boundaries nobody else can cross. This is also often, though not always combined with the function of a messenger to gods:

Admixing both divine and human traits, [the trickster] can slip back and forth

across the border between the sacred and the profane with ease. He may bring

something across this line from the gods to humans – be it a message, punishment,

an essential culture power, or even life itself.” (Hynes and Doty 39-40)

Therefore, people are often at the mercy tricksters, when they want something from the gods, as tricksters might be the only link between the two worlds and they the ones who carry the human prayers to gods and the gods’ response in return.

Another important boundary between worlds that trickster can cross is the boundary between life and death. They can cross this line voluntarily at their own pleasure, like in the case of the Greek trickster god Hermes. Among his many attributes is that he takes the souls of the dead to the underworld. Other tricksters might cross this boundary in a more direct manner – by simply dying and (occasionally) coming back to life again: “Violation of temporal cycles extends to the violation of even the cycle of life and death” (Babcock-Abrahams 154-5). Even the line between life and death is blurred by these characters, who are “ambiguously situated between life and death” (Babcock-

Abrahams 160). No boundary is safe from the trickster, not even those ones that bear the notion of permanence for most other beings, like this boundary that divides life and death.

Throughout their wanderings, tricksters also tend to cross more earthly boundaries like the one between water and earth fairly frequently. For example,

“Wakdjunkaga is crossing or throwing himself into bodies of water, especially lakes, or standing the edge between land and water in almost every episode” (Babcock-Abrahams

176). As she further proceeds to explain, this bears a significance because water is associated with fluidity and is “anomalous and unstable” (Babcock-Abrahams 176) just like the trickster and therefore this element bears a certain resemblance to the trickster’s character.

The boundaries do not have to be necessarily physical. They can also take the form of various rules and taboos tricksters break in the process. Tricksters are constant rule-breakers; “creatively antinomian [overreachers] transgressing the artificial codes of society and the categories of human perception that give rise to those codes” (Ballinger

“Living Sideways” 15). No advice, law or rule, no matter how sacred it might be is followed by tricksters: “the more sacred a belief, the more likely is the trickster to be found profaning it” (Hynes and Doty 37). These actions do not stay without consequences, which are not necessarily suffered by the tricksters who caused the problem. For example, Wakdjunkaga borrows the children of his younger brother, however, he does not follow the rules, how he is supposed to look after them, so the children die, and he is himself almost killed by the angered father of the little ones. By transgressing this boundary, tricksters very frequently cause a lot of damage for others as well as for themselves.

Another type of boundary the trickster figures can cross are the boundaries of their own physical shape. The shape-shifting ability is another typical trickster trait, and it will be discussed in a later chapter separately.

2. 7 Imitating

Tricksters also frequently try to imitate the behaviour of others. These myths frequently both the positive and the negative side to staying true to one “way” (Hyde 43).

Tricksters’ attempts can have unforeseeable, sometimes even deadly consequences. In one episode, Radin’s trickster Wakdjunkaga spends a whole day imitating what seems to be a standing man, who refuses to move only to find out that this supposed man is actually a tree. Other examples of Wakdjunkaga trying to imitate others to obtain food. In four consecutive episodes, he tries to get food in the same manner he has seen others do it.

However, he is unable to make pieces of ice “[turn] into lily-of-the-lake roots” (Radin the

Trickster 42) the way muskrat can. He is also unable to catch fish as effectively as the snipe does, obtain fresh meat as easily as the woodpecker or catch deer as the polecat does. Every time he tries to imitate their behaviour, he ends up failing, and his own wife is ashamed of his behaviour. However, the Trickster is not preoccupied or ashamed by that at all continues trying to imitate the others. While in these examples the consequences of the trickster’s behaviour are relatively harmless, there are also many stories, where they are much direr. There is a reoccurring story that appears among several Native

American tribes where Coyote tries to fly like birds, but in the end, he falls to his death.

On the other hand, Hyde shows that trickster’s inability to find his own way, because he “has the ability to copy others, but no ability of his own” (43) which results in his constant imitation of others can be viewed as a positive quality too, because it allows tricksters to adapt to the ever-changing world without being “trapped in” (Hyde

44) one specific way of doing things.

2. 8 Shapeshifting

A further frequent trickster trait that seems to be shared by most trickster figures is the ability to shift shapes. It happens quite frequently that tricksters take the form of natural objects to get what they want. This happens, for example, in the story of Raven, when he tries to get light for the world, which has already been referred to in the previous subchapter. In order to get to the man who has been keeping “light just for himself”

(Swanton), Raven changes himself into a piece of dirt and makes the man’s daughter pregnant. When she gives birth to the child, it is again Raven in another form. In this case, Raven seems to be capable of changing his form at will. This allows for the tricksters to have even more options how to trick others, as by changing their body shape they can for a moment get away from their identity of tricksters and the suspicion from others that entails. It can also be used by tricksters to avoid consequences of their actions or to get closer to women who would be otherwise inaccessible. However, no matter how thorough the change is, in the end, the tricksters’ nature always eventually shows, and gives them away.

Tricksters also seem to be able to change their gender when they require it. These changes can be as simple as a “disguise [involving] nothing more than changing clothes with another” (Hynes and Doty 36). This includes the Norse trickster Loki, who dresses himself as a bridesmaid to help Thor recover his stolen hammer Mjolnir. A more complex gender change can be seen in Radin’s Trickster cycle, when Wakdjunkaga changes himself into a woman for a time period. This episode will be further discussed in the subsequent chapters.

3. The Roles of Trickster Tales in Native American Cultures

In Native American cultures, trickster tales have important roles. Likely the most obvious role is that of a source of entertainment. “Historically, the single most common significance overtly attached to tricksters and their antics by Western cultures has been their ability to function as a vent through which pressures engendered by a system of beliefs and behaviors can be dissipated.” (Hynes and Doty 206) The various mishaps and adventures trickster figures go through are usually very amusing, and they can make even the most serious and uncomfortable topics seem more approachable. Hyde discusses this quality of trickster tales in a more general world-wide context, stressing the importance of trickster figures and humour, in general, to access serious topics without the risk of serious repercussions. Erdoes and Ortiz stress the importance of laughter for people, especially for Native Americans quoting a Sioux medicine man: “A people who have so much to cry about as Indians do also need their laughter to survive” (336), stressing the importance of people having something to laugh about in a world that can be very cruel and sad.

At another level, they also serve as educative materials. When tricksters break the rules or otherwise misbehave, their behaviour quite frequently backfires, and they end up hurting themselves. In this non-forceful way, the listeners discover what the consequences of not following the rules can be and that these are quite often bad for everybody who has to suffer them. As such, trickster tales serve as “comic cautionary social image of potentially dangerous human behavior” (Ballinger “Living Sideways”

20). A good example of this is a story of the Native American trickster Wakdjunkaga and laxative bulb. As the trickster is wandering around, he comes across some bulb that keeps saying “He who chews me, he will defecate; he will defecate!” (Radin The Trickster 25) Wakdjunkaga does not believe that the rule applies to him, and therefore, he does not heed the warning and eats the bulb anyway. Naturally, this leads to him spending the rest of the episode defecating, because he did not do as he was told. This episode shows the audience that it is necessary to follow the rules, otherwise, the consequences might be very uncomfortable, and in more extreme cases even deadly to the perpetrator and sometimes also for others. Similarly to this, trickster stories “serve to highlight important social values” (Hynes and Doty 1-2). By transgressing various social boundaries and rules and showing what the consequences of such behaviour can be, tricksters show why these rules are important and reinforce them. As Hyde points out, trickster tales also served to reinforce rules within the societies that created them: “Mocking but not changing the order of things, ritual dirt-work operates as a kind of safety valve, allowing internal conflicts and nagging anomalies to be expressed without serious consequence.” (187)

Thus, tricksters show the shortcomings of established orders while at the same time reinforcing this order or changing it where it is absolutely necessary.

Furthermore, trickster stories also often serve as explanations for why the world works in the way it does. In many Native American Coyote stories, Coyote changes the perfectionist plans of gods and makes the world a little bit more chaotic. In this manner,

Coyote moves the boundaries of possibilities and makes things that were not possible before possible. Coyote’s mishaps as well as conscious changes of the world also form what is possible to do and what is not: “‘If he did not do all those things, then those things would not be possible in the world,’ for ‘through the stories everything is made possible’”(Toelken qtd. in Babcock and Cox 101). This is true for the good as well as the bad changes that he has made to the world. Therefore, it could be claimed that tricksters have formed the world to be full of possibilities that would have otherwise never existed.

Now the humans can decide where they will let these options lead them. 4. Trickster Figures and Gender

Before any discussion on gender in trickster myths can ensue, it is important to establish, what is understood by the term gender and by the term sex. Although these two words are frequently used interchangeably, traditionally, sex has been seen as a biological category, it “refers to a set of biological attributes in humans and animals. It is primarily associated with physical and physiological features including chromosomes, gene expression, hormone levels and function, and reproductive/sexual anatomy.” (What Is

Gender? What Is Sex?). Gender, on the other hand, is “the socially constructed roles, behaviours, expressions and identities of girls, women, boys, men, and gender diverse people. It influences how people perceive themselves and each other, how they act and interact, and the distribution of power and resources in society.” (What Is Gender? What

Is Sex?) Gender is usually based to a certain degree on the biological sex; however, while these two categories overlap, the correspondence is not complete. In the context of this thesis, the distinction between these two terms will be upheld where possible, and the term gender will be preferred in some situations where both terms might be suitable.

Another issue then arises in how to refer to the trickster figures that will be discussed, as these may in some cases, be able to change their gender. While using the gender-neutral form they might seem like a viable option, the use of this pronoun might easily create confusion as to whether the text is referring to one trickster, who has the ability to appear in male as well as female form or to a group of several tricksters.

Therefore, the “traditional approach” (Garner 821) will be used and the “masculine pronouns he and him” will be used to “to cover all people” (Garner 821), or in this case all tricksters, unless these tricksters are female-only. The gender of trickster figures has been an ongoing debate, especially in the last decades, when the feminist movements sparked the interest in establishing the place of women in literature. Many scholars have expressed their opinion that most, if not all, of the best-known trickster figures have a “tricksterish phallicism,” (Hynes and Doty 17) and as such, they should be considered male, who have the ability to take on a female form when they wish to.

However, tricksters have a tendency to blur boundaries, and the boundary between what is male and what is female is no exception. While it seems to be true that most of the nowadays best-known mythical trickster figures spend most of their time in a male form, they also seem to be capable of crossing the gender line at will and thus claiming that they are male seems to be at least a case of simplifying the issue. Some trickster figures challenge the gender classification, do it only subtly by dressing up in women’s clothes or performing tasks that were supposed to be performed by women.

Others can do it much more elaborately and change their biological sex completely, even going as far as being able to give birth – albeit they tend to change it only temporarily.

“Sexual ambiguity is also characteristic of trickster, despite his repeated appearance as an ambient phallus.” (Babcock and Cox 100) Even though these tricksters seem to be purely male at first sight, the matter is more complex, many of the tricksters also have a feminine side to them or the ability to cross the gender line, which is frequently discussed only very briefly or completely dismissed. Despite the ability of many tricksters to change their biological sex and become completely female for as long as it suits them, many scholars see these tricksters as male nonetheless. Under these conditions, it is easy to understand why female tricksters seem to be rare. As Jay Cox summarises it, “most scholars ignore the possibility that trickster can be female as well as male; or like Franchot Ballinger, separate the female trickster stories from ‘the predominant male tricksters,’ effectively marginalizing and devaluing them” (17).

Other scholars argue that while there are many women who exhibit trickster-like traits, however, only “few of these have the elaborated career of deceit that tricksters have” (Hyde 338) and thus could be considered tricksters. Only very few female characters can be, according to Hyde, considered genuine tricksters. Hyde claims that one of the reasons for the rarity of women in the role of trickster figures is that many trickster tales revolve around the sexual adventures of the trickster figures. However, these would have had bigger repercussions for women “before the technology of birth control” (Hyde

341), and therefore female characters fit the role of a trickster figure. Another reason for this rarity is that the tricksters “fabled sex drive rarely leads to any offspring” (Hyde 341).

This assertion may be called into question because many stories about the trickster’s sexual exploits do not discuss what happened to the tricksters’ sexual partner or victim after the act, and thus it can be challenging to ascertain whether those actions lead to any offspring or not. Nonetheless, it provides a plausible reason why explicitly female tricksters are rarer than male tricksters and even the female tricksters who do exist rarely show the sexual desires male tricksters have. The ability of women and other female figures to get pregnant and carry a child would prevent any female trickster from displaying the sexual appetite that is typical for so many male tricksters and thus it stands to reason that male tricksters would appear more in these stories. The last reason he gives to explain the lack of female tricksters is the view that trickster figures can be a representation of a boy’s separation from his mother. However, even this theory, he admits, fails to account for the lack of female tricksters since “mother-daughter relationships are just as fraught with ambiguity and with tension over connecting and not- connecting” (Hyde 343). The most reasonable explanation would under these circumstances be the patriarchal structure of the society. In a patriarchal society “the male trickster clearly has the advantages of masculinity: mobility, autonomy, power, and safety” (Landay 2). Moreover, many of the traits that make the trickster figure who he/she is were available only to men: “In the patriarchal societies that produced the archetypal tricksters Hyde discusses, the very qualities that enabled the trickster to operate belonged culturally to men” (Lock). As she further explains As Helen Lock notes in her article

“tricksters are culturally specific” (n.p.) and therefore they became limited by the society that created them.

Because tricksters are constant rule-breakers, one might wonder, why female tricksters do not appear more at least in some contexts. Hyde asks this question as well:

“At this point it could be asked why, if tricksters are disruptive and oppositional, they wouldn’t be female especially in patriarchy.” (340) and then he also answers it. The role of the tricksters is not only to break the rules, but also to reinforce them at the same time

(Hyde 340). So while a female trickster would make sense as far as the rule-breaking aspect of trickster figures is concerned, they do not really fit with this side of trickster stories. As most of the known tricksters have appeared in the context of patriarchal societies, they also need to be male to reinforce these rules. Having a female character as a trickster would stand against the rule-reinforcing side of trickster stories.

Hyde notes that there are some episodes featuring female trickster figures.

However, these are very rare. He uses the story of a Greek woman Baubo, who manages

“to make Demeter laugh in the midst of her grief and anger over the loss of her daughter

Persephone” (Hyde 336) as an example of a female trickster. He concludes that examples like this one “suggest that there may have been a tradition of female tricksters that disappeared over the centuries during which Zeus worshippers and Christian ‘fathers’ were shoring up their dignity” (Hyde 337) and stories of earlier female tricksters were simply lost as the standards of acceptable female behaviour changed.

He also expresses his opinion about tricksters, who have the ability to change into women. While some scholars see these tricksters as having a dual gender, he disagrees with this idea as they spend most of their time as male and thus are male. In the context of his speculations about female tricksters, who have disappeared from the records, however, it would make sense that any feminine side of a trickster might have would be less pronounced than the masculine side. As several scholars have noted, the gender of the people who collected the stories is also reflected in them: “gender of the anthropologist or folklorist recording stories—in earlier times, mostly male—reflects the nature of the stories the recorder is told” (Lock). Therefore, this ambiguous sides of tricksters’ gender should not be dismissed as easily.

However, there are also several scholars who believe that female tricksters have been simply ignored or underrepresented in the works on gender in trickster tales.

“Tricksters frequently transform themselves into women and are sometimes represented as hermaphrodites. Moreover, female coyotes are not unknown in either traditional or contemporary Native American literatures” (Babcock and Cox 100). Marilyn Jurich asserts that female tricksters are much more common than it is generally acknowledged and in her volume Scheherazade’s Sisters attempts to find female tricksters, or trickstars, as she labels them, among famous female characters in myths and folk tales from cultures around the world. She labels characters such as Pandora from the Greek mythology, whom Jurich views not as a traditional trickster, but as “the trick, someone else's idea of the trick” (Jurich 197) or the titular Scheherazade as female tricksters, who have been neglected by male scholars because trickstars are female. While Jurich has been criticised that her analysis is “under-contexted, and under-theorized readings of individual stories of vastly differing (and often uncertain) provenance, genre, and formal qualities” (Mills

238), she nonetheless presents some interesting points. One of these is the gap between the way women have been traditionally viewed in society, which would suggest that female should often appear in the role of tricksters and the actual representation of female tricksters as an archetype in works of scholars: “While society has traditionally regarded women as tricksters in the more negative sense of that term, considering that by nature women are deceitful, irrational, uncontrollable in their sexual appetites, the archetypal woman trickster has been largely ignored.” (Jurich 28) While, as she points out, women have been often seen and depicted as tricky and deceitful, the label of a trickster figure has primarily been given to male characters.

Some scholars explore female trickster figures in other parts of the world; for example, Margaret Mills presents two female characters with trickster qualities coming from Afghani culture. Similarly, Lori Landay attempts to recover trickster figures in

American culture. Although the aim of her book is to examine more recent female trickster figures, she also dedicates a part of the books to female trickster figures in Native

American and Afro-American traditions. The general agreement though seems to be that

“we have to look in new environments to discover new cases of Trickstars” (Williams

169). Therefore, not only well-known stories should be re-examined, but also lesser- known stories should be analysed to uncover possible unknown or henceforth unacknowledged female trickster figures.

The following subchapters will feature three distinct trickster figures from three mythologies of the world. As it was mentioned in the “Introduction”, the figures will be the Greek trickster god Hermes, the Germanic trickster figure Loki and the African

Yoruba trickster figure Esu.

4. 1 Hermes

One of the best-known European tricksters is the Greek trickster god Hermes.

Being the son of a god and a nymph called Maya, he is of an “impure birth” (Hynes and

Doty 39) and thus not a member of the Olympian gods by birth. Through his cunning, he manages to improve his lot in life and become one of the important gods. He “[starts] upon his career” of a trickster “before he was a day old” (Hamilton 34) when he steals

Apollo’s cattle and later upon discovery lies about it. When he becomes an Olympians, he becomes the patron of thieves and travellers and the messenger of gods, strengthening his connection with traits that typically associated with tricksters such as stealing, lying, travelling or boundaries.

Compared with other trickster figures, Hermes’ sexual exploits are not as pronounced in the mythical stories. Therefore, the tales about Hermes do not centre around his need to satisfy his hunger or sexual desire. Nevertheless, despite relative lack of sexually motivated stories about Hermes’ tricks, even Hermes does not entirely escape the association with blurred gender boundaries. His connection with gender can be seen through his son Hermaphroditos: “He has simultaneously masculine and feminine qualities, if we derive characteristics of the father from his progeny, Hermaphroditos.”

(Hynes and Doty 4). Hermes’ name is a part of the hermaphrodites’ name, with the other half belonging to the child’s mother, the goddess Aphrodite. However, sometimes the figure of the hermaphrodite is equalled with Hermes, ignoring the involvement of

Aphrodite. Hyde criticises this representation as “The classical hermaphrodite is born of the union of Hermes and Aphrodite; to say the figure represents Hermes is an insult to

Aphrodite.” (335) Nonetheless, the closeness of Hermes with the hermaphrodite is undeniable.

4. 2 Loki

Another well-known mythical trickster figure is the Old-Norse trickster Loki. Just like many other tricksters, he is an “outsider in the … pantheon” (von Schnurbein 109).

He is not a god, but a giant, who made a blood pact with Odin and became accepted among the gods of Asgard. Loki is a very ambiguous figure. He is fond of playing tricks on others and often “brings misfortune upon himself and the other Asir with his clumsiness, haplessness, or malevolence,” (von Schnurbein 115) as a result.

Unfortunately for Loki, his constant tricks often land him in trouble with the gods. An example can be found when he causes that Thor's wife, the goddess Sif loses all of her golden hair.

The most extreme example of what kinds of consequences his behaviour can have is, however, when it puts into motion chain of events that cause the god Balder to be killed and eventually lead to Ragnarök, thus his behaviour “merited prominent positioning in the context of the world's demise” (von Schnurbein 123). He is credited to be the inventor of the fishnet, which he creates ironically as a part of his attempt to prevent the gods from catching him when he is in the form of fish. Although Loki’s behaviour is often a source of problems and annoyance of the gods that surround him, he is also pivotal in other cases, “he always redeems himself by dint of his cunning, his magical capacities, or his eloquence.” (von Schnurbein 115) For example, he plays a pivotal role in retrieving Thor’s lost hammer, when he manages not only to find out who stole but also to plan and execute its’ retrieval.

As a shapeshifter, he is able to shift into a woman, various kinds of animals or other mythical beings. In terms of gender, Loki is more ambiguous than Hermes. At first, he might seem to be a purely masculine character. He is married to Sigyn with whom he has a child, and he also becomes the lover of the jötunn Angrboða with whom he fathers several children, the ruler of one of the realms of the dead Hel, the wolf Fenrir and the world-serpent Jörmungandr all of whom play an important role during Ragnarök.

However, even though this might suggest that Loki is simply male, the boundaries of gender do not seem to limit him to being solely male. As many tricksters, he has the ability to “shift shape or gender.” (Hynes and Doty 17) On several occasions, he becomes a female for a short time to get what he needs. This can be, for example, observed when the lord of the ogres steals Thor’s hammer Mjollnir and requires the beautiful goddess

Freya to marry him. Otherwise, he will not return the hammer. Loki then dresses Thor as a bride and changes into a maiden to be Thor’s bridesmaid. Their joint effort is successful, and they get Mjollnir back. This story shows that Loki’s shapeshifting abilities seem to be superb to the gods, as he is able to change himself into a woman at will, while Thor needs to be dressed in women’s clothes that cover his whole body to be able to pretend he is a woman. It is also often presumed that Loki changed himself into a giantess and caused that the god Balder is not released from the underworld.

An even more extreme case of Loki’s gender change happens when the gods decide they want to build a wall to protect Asgard from giants. A stranger shows up and offers to build their wall if, in return, he can have “Freyja as his wife and possession of the sun and moon beside” (Sturluson 66). Believing it to be impossible, the gods agree that if he can manage to build that wall within one season without any help except that of his horse Svaðilfari, the builder can have what he asked for from the gods. As the end of the season draws near, the situation seems to be unfavourable to the gods. Since the gods believe Loki to be responsible for the failure of their plan to have as much of the wall as possible finished without having to give the sun, the moon and Freya to the builder, they decide that Loki needs to make the builder fail to finish the wall before the deadline. To do that “Loki transforms himself into a mare” (von Schnurbein 114) and draws the stallion Svaðilfari away from his owner. The plan works, and the builder fails to build the wall in the given time limit. However, Loki has “such dealings with Svaðilfari”

(Sturluson 68) that he gets pregnant while he is a mare. Later on, he gives birth to an eight-legged foal Sleipnir, which comes to grow up into the best horse among men and gods. Thus, Loki not only changes into a female horse, but he is also shown to have the ability to bear children – or, in this case, a foal – as a female would be able to.

There is a story about Loki eating a “half-cooked heart of a woman and by that becoming sufficiently female as to give birth” (Hyde 336) which Hyde uses to argue that

Loki is simply a male trickster with the ability to change into a female. However, as it can be seen from these myths, although it happens only for a short period of time, Loki does not merely pretend to be a woman or a female horse, he actually becomes female, including gaining the ability to give birth. Therefore, gender plays a fairly significant role in several stories about Loki; he has the ability to cross the gender line at will and completely. While Hermes’ association with gender was relatively loose, the myths where Loki changes his gender would seem to suggest that trickster is undefinable in terms of gender just like in many other aspects, because, in these characters, polar opposites blend together.

4. 3 Esu-Elegbara

Originally coming from Africa, this trickster is well-known not only by the

African people but is also in America, as he was brought to the country along with the

African people, who were imported as slaves to the Americas. He “appears even today in

Nigeria, Benin, Brazil, Cuba, Haiti, and the United States” (Gates 4). The name of this trickster has many forms depending on the region: “This curious figure is called Esu-

Elegbara in Nigeria and Legba and Legba among the Fon in Benin. His New World figurations include Exú in Brazil, Echu-Elegua in Cuba, Papa Legba” (Gates 5). The individual incarnations of Esu can differ in some respects from one another, and therefore, what applies to one of them might not apply to another one. To make matters even more complicated, Esu is portrayed as a very complex character he is characterised by “individuality, satire, parody, irony, magic, indeterminacy, open-endedness, ambiguity, sexuality, chance, uncertainty, disruption and reconciliation, betrayal and loyalty” (Gates 6). Some of these traits even seem to contradict each other, which only stresses what a complicated character Esu, and the trickster figure in general, is. However, scholars who have studied Esu and his various versions seem always to find some qualities that show that he has the “nature of trickster” (Gates 6) and thus can be considered one.

Esu is traditionally associated with many kinds of borders and has a dualistic character. He has one leg in the realm of gods, the other in the mortal world. This notion of two-sidedness is even reinforced by him being dubbed the “master of that elusive, mystical barrier that separates the divine world from the profane” (Gates 6) and the

“guardian of the crossroads” (Gates 6). Because of this connection, he is associated with travelling, but also with the double nature, which is so typical for tricksters. As seemingly all tricksters, Esu is amoral, he was “created indifferent to the principles of good and evil”

(Soyinka 18), unable to distinguish between them the way other beings do. Therefore, he is only driven by his own desires and any consequences that come from his actions, regardless of whether they are good or bad, are only a side-product of this. Esu is known for bringing sacred palm nuts to people because the gods were starving, which did not suit him and being responsible for the “process of interpretation” (Gates 9) of their divination, but he was also responsible for destroying the balance of the world by having another god imprisoned.

His dualistic nature shows even in his gender, although it might not be evident at first sight. Esu is by some considered a very phallic deity; “master of style and stylus, the phallic god of generation and fecundity” (Gates 6) with an extremely large penis and unbound sexuality. His sexual appetite seems to be endless, however, as Henry Lewis

Gates points out, “Esu’s sexuality is indeterminate, if insatiable” (Gates 29). As the

Yoruba scholar Ayodele Ogundipe explains, the representation of Esu as a phallic Yoruba god is “quite arbitrary and misguided” (89) as the evidence that is provided for this conclusion is insufficient. Both Ogundipe and Gates note that the iconography of Esu depicts him having both feminine and masculine traits. These are the most notable in

Esu’s statues which show Esu as “figured as paired male and female statues, which his/her devotees carry while dancing, or as one bisexual figure” (Gates 29). Ogundipe summarises this by asserting that Esu:

is certainly not restricted to human distinctions of gender or sex; he is at once both

male and female. Although his masculinity is depicted as visually and graphically overwhelming, his equally expressive femininity renders his enormous sexuality

ambiguous, contrary, and genderless. (97)

As a divine being, Esu is not limited to be only a man or a woman, he can be either of that or even both at the same time. Opgundipe supports her argument by describing various statues of Esu, some of them male, other female and some even hermaphroditic and the typical attributes these statues have. She further argues that arguments scholars have previously used to make Esu seem like a phallic figure actually misinterpreted attributes of such statues. For example, she argues that claiming Esu’s “long hair dress”

(89) is a sign of his phallic “libidinous energy” (89) stems from a “failure to look deeply and carefully to the Yoruba and their culture” (Ogundipe 90-1) as this hairstyle can be worn by women as well. Although his masculine traits seem to be more pronounced, Esu possesses at the same time both feminine and masculine traits and thus cannot be simply characterised as a male trickster as he transgresses the gender boundary.

4. 4 Summary

Gender in trickster tales is a very complex issue. For a long time being a mythical trickster figure has been considered a mostly male privilege with some rare exceptions.

Some of the best-known authorities such as Lewis Hyde have claimed that even tricksters who spend some time in a female form simply male with the ability to change into females.

In the case of the Greek trickster Hermes, masculinity of this specific trickster figure does not seem to be too questionable. Even though there are instances when he shapeshifts or masquerades to get what he wants, he does not seem to feel the necessity to change into a woman. However, as the father of Hermaphroditos, he is still connected to crossing the gender boundary. In the cases of the two other two tricksters that were analysed in this chapter, both gender and sex seem to be much more questionable. Hyde claims that Loki is one of “the standard tricksters [who] are male, some of whom on rare occasions become briefly female” (336). Nonetheless, in incidents like these, Loki goes above and beyond a simple transformation when he changes into a woman. When compared to Thor, whose “transformation” is accomplished by covering him up in female clothes to hide his masculine features, Loki’s transformation is more complex, as he seems to be capable of changing into a woman, not merely disguise himself as one. This impression is even stronger by his ability to conceive and give birth in the form of a mare when he is trying to inhibit the construction of the wall around Asgard. While he spends most of the time as a man, he seems to have also a feminine side that allows him to cross the gender boundary more effectively than the gods are capable of doing it. Similarly, the

Yoruba trickster figure Esu-Elegbara has traits that belong to both sexes, and despite his frequently mentioned large penis, he can also be depicted with feminine traits. Therefore, claiming that tricksters are mostly male is questionable, as many of them seem to have the power to change not only their gender, but also their biological sex on a whim or even directly have female qualities as well as male ones.

David Williams makes a very important point about the social restrictions that women face, and which would limit their ability to become tricksters:

For the rules governing women’s behaviour, when it comes to sexuality, marriage,

and childbirth, are enmeshed in the double standard, and women have

traditionally been caught in the snare of duplicitous regulation. So it follows that

the female trickster would be confronting a whole other set of constraints imposed upon her then those imposed upon men (no matter whether the societies are

patrilineal or matrilineal). (170)

He points out that even in societies where women could have a relatively equal or possibly even higher positions than men, there would be still at least some societal restrictions to what they could and could not do. This would necessarily also have to be reflected in the trickster tales as female tricksters would have more rules they could transgress. This, combined with Hyde’s comments on the biological constraints on women, would have as trickster figures, for example, that female tricksters would not be able to appear in stories that revolve around sexual appetite, as they could get pregnant, which have been mentioned earlier, would seem to explain why many tricksters spend most of their time in a male form, even though they are not limited to being one sex and can change between sexes as they please. 5. Gender in Native American Myths

Oral literature has a very important part of Native American cultures, and the mythical trickster has an “especially prominent position in the oral traditions of Native

Americans” (Ballinger “Ambighere” 21). In the Native American trickster tales, most tricksters have the form of some animal. However, their behaviour is sometimes more human than animalistic. They are capable of wearing clothes, hunting with bows and arrows, or cooking their food. While the characters are very often foolish buffoons, they are also the sacred clowns who bring laughter to the people and heroes who try to improve people’s lot in the world by bringing them necessities like fire or water or by ridding them of dangerous monsters, who molest people.

Many different trickster figures can be found in Native American mythologies depending on the regions the trickster comes from:

“A short list of Native American tricksters, would include: for the Northeast

Algonquins, Glooscap; for the Iroquois, Flint and Sapling; for the Central

Woodlands, Manabozho or Wiskajak; on the Plains, the Plateau, and in California,

Coyote; in the North Pacific, Mink and Bluejay in addition to Raven… The

trickster Rabbit is found in the Southeast” (Hyde 356)

As can be seen, many of these are associated with various kinds of animals. “This association is typically either by virtue of the name given to the trickster or by the trickster certain animal traits” (Carroll 110). As it was already mentioned several times in the previous chapters, each trickster figure is unique. Even if a trickster takes the same form in the myths of various tribal or regional groups, they can differ in their individual traits.

Therefore, it is impossible to discuss all Native American trickster figures within the scope of this analysis. For this reason, the focus will be on two well-known Native American trickster figures from two different regions and these will be supplemented with other trickster tales for comparison and contrast. The main trickster figures will be

Wakdjunkaga from Radin’s cycle The Trickster and Coyote tricksters from Elsie Clews

Parsons’ Tewa Tales. It should be however noted that the main focus will be on these two tricksters the way they appear in these particular collections. There are many variants of some of the tales that will be discussed in this chapter, and some of these differ in details, therefore, the analysis might not apply to all variants of these myths.

As it could be seen in the previous section, most of the canonical trickster figures are generally considered male. However, as trickster tends to elude being categorised in many areas, they also cannot be categorised in terms of gender easily. Also, as it could be seen in the previous chapters most arguments about tricksters being mostly male are based rather on the biological sex that they spend most of the time in than on gender and aspects such as their adherence to the roles associated with the given gender, cases of cross-dressing and other transgressions of gender limits. “Coprophilic, phallic, and even transgendered adventure permeate, much of Native American trickster lore” (Hawley 96), however, the last category is very frequently considered only an adventure of a male trickster who changes himself into a woman for a short time.

In terms of biological sex, the same that has been asserted about myths from other parts of the world about sex in trickster myths seems to be applicable to Native American myths as well. Female-only tricksters do exist. Nonetheless, they are much rarer than their male counterparts, and they also seem to be limited in terms of roles they can take on in the myths. There have been many speculations about why the female tricksters are rarer than male. Some of them were already mentioned in the previous chapter in connection to gender in trickster myths in general, for example, Hyde’s theory which draws attention to the trickster’s extreme obsession with sexual encounters. He points out that since women are the ones to carry, give birth and take care of babies, and therefore, female tricksters would not be able to appear in episodes that revolve around sexual intercourse. While it is true that children of the tricksters’ are rarely directly linked to their sexual exploits, tricksters, nonetheless, often do have children, whether they are male or female. Some of them have children already prior to the beginning of the stories, others, like Wakdjunkaga, have them even during the course of the stories. This would then seem to contradict Hyde’s claim that the trickster’s “fabled sex drive rarely leads to any offspring” (341) to a certain degree. Moreover, in some cases, tricksters even go as far as bearing children themselves, even though they are supposed to be male.

However, some scholars have attempted to discuss the relative rarity of well- known female trickster figures in connection with Native American stories specifically.

The rarity of female tricksters can be even more perplexing when considering that some of the tribes of Native Americans are “more often gynocratic than not, and they are never patriarchal” (Allen), and therefore it would make sense for these tribes to have a female trickster as opposed to patriarchal societies. As it was mentioned in the previous chapter, in the context of patriarchal societies, having a male trickster makes more sense as he reinforces the rules of society by breaking them. Therefore, one would expect that the opposite would be true for societies that have a matrilineal structure, and female tricksters would break and reinforce the rules of these societies. Franchot Ballinger provides a whole range of options, why this could be possible. One of those theories is connected with the people who collected the stories. Since the majority of scholars who collected trickster tales were men, female trickster figure may have been simply overlooked and tales where they appear unwittingly ignored because the storytellers might have felt that stories with male tricksters would be of more interest to these collectors and the collectors did not think to ask about female tricksters. Lori Landay supports this hypothesis in her the part of her book that is dedicated to African-American mythical female tricksters

“there are no examples of female tricksters in African-American culture because the folktales that were recorded were done so by men” (18). Scholars have often speculated about the source of this gender imbalance in trickster tales. As it could be seen in the previous chapter, it is a popular hypothesis that the reason why so little record of female tricksters exists might lie in the fact that most of these tales were recorded by men who belonged to a patriarchal society. Ballinger asserted something similar about the gender in Native American trickster stories:

Given the vagaries of recording and translating stories from oral traditions, it may

be that female tricksters were more common than current publications indicate.

Perhaps many recorders – largely dominant-culture males – simply showed no

interest in female tricksters, or perhaps, as Wiget has suggested, women

storytellers, more likely to tell female trickster stories, weren't sought out by male

investigators in the mistaken belief that the men of the community were the

“repository of traditional knowledge” ("His Life" 89). Perhaps they suppressed

such stories for propriety's sake. Or maybe the storytellers themselves, noting

Euroamerican moral predilections and cultural assumptions about women,

suppressed the stories. (Ballinger “Coyote, He/She Was Going There” 22)

Ballinger, in his essay, presents several reasons why female tricksters could be rarer than male ones in Native American cultures. As it could be seen in the previous chapter, the patriarchal structure of the society in Europe has led many scholars to ignore or dismiss the feminine sides of tricksters as only an aspect some male trickster figures temporarily have. Therefore, it does sound like a plausible theory that female tricksters could appear in more stories than those that are currently known. Unfortunately, this is only speculation for which there is no evidence to support it.

As it was mentioned in the previous chapters, in patriarchal cultures it makes sense that the trickster figures would be male-bodied as this would allow them to test and cross the boundaries while at the same time reinforcing the rules. However, some of the

Native American societies are matriarchal or matrilineal while at the same time, they have male trickster figures. Ballinger speculates that this may be due to the fact Native

American women are associated with “domestic stability” (“Coyote, He/She Was Going

There” 28) and therefore, they would not make good trickster figures as this association would be “undercut” (Ballinger “Coyote, He/She Was Going There” 28) by the wandering aspect.

Moreover, tricksters infamous sexual appetite might present another challenge in connection to female tricksters: “No woman is safe for long from a trickster's penis; not virgins or other men's wives, not his daughters, not his mother-in-law, not even his grandmother.” (Ballinger “Living Sideways” 18) However, as it was mentioned in the previous chapter, the women’s ability to give birth might be another reason why female tricksters would appear less frequently than male ones. This seems to be confirmed by

Ballinger who notes that a trickster “attribute [that is] absent among published female trickster stories is the trickster's prodigious sexual appetite” (“Coyote, He/She Was Going

There” 25). This is somewhat perplexing as non-trickster female characters seem to be

“equally lusty” (Ballinger “Coyote, He/She Was Going There” 25) and therefore, which would suggest that the reason for the absence of sexual appetite of female tricksters cannot be prudishness about female sexuality. Far more likely this is caused by nearly all of the female Coyote trickster stories focusing on her various failures as a mother, or even as a Coyote, where stories about lust would not fit.

Another possible source of the gender imbalance in Native American trickster tales could be the matter of translation from the source language into English. The

Nehiyawak trickster figure Wisacejak is sometimes described as having “no gender”

(Bear and Gareau 5) in some myths. Since the pronouns which are used to refer to this trickster in the original language “lack…gendered pronouns” (Fagan 10), this trickster can be viewed as both male and female or both at the same time. Kristina Fagan discusses this theory claiming that “despite the lack of gendered pronouns in the Cree language,

‘Elder Brother’ is not genderless; he is a male who sometimes disguises himself as female” (10). Nevertheless, this may depend on the understanding of the trickster by specific individuals.

Despite the rarity of known female tricksters in Native American tales, some do exist. Much of the work that focuses on female trickster figures deals with more recent works of literature because female tricksters seem to be more abundant in these works than in the older mythical stories. However, trickster cycles are being re-examined in terms of gender as well:

Trickster is not a pawn in a power game between sexes, between cultures; nor is

trickster a commodity to be simply silkscreened, lithographed, or cut from

plywood. So then, while one might dismiss a female as a trickster simply because

of gender, the overlap of women and tricksters in Native American writing

provides too much evidence to ignore her existence as trickster. (J. Cox 20)

A reoccurring female trickster figure – both in myths and in scholarly analyses – is female

Coyote, who appears for example in myths of the matrilineal Hopi and Tewa tribes. (Ballinger “Coyote, He/She Was Going There” 25). However, it should be noted that since many “tricksters in different tribal traditions often share similar experiences or episodes” (J. H. Cox 253) and therefore episodes “of the same mythic character, who has spread to different tribes ” (Carroll 107) might differ in some respects including gender.

The same episode might occur in the oral tradition of one tribe with a male trickster figure while it will appear with a female in the myths of a different tribe. Male and female

Coyote tricksters will be further analysed in the second subchapter in connection to the representation of gender in Elsie Clews Parsons’ Tewa Tales as several episodes in this collection feature a female trickster figure.

Another female character, which is often mentioned in connection to tricksters is the Yellow Woman who is “an accomplished hunter, tribal leader, and fertility figure” (J.

Cox 18), whose actions when she attempts to flee her unsuccessful marriage resemble those of a trickster figure. However, she does not seem to have a trickster career as elaborate as the male tricksters or even female Coyote tricksters.

As it was mentioned earlier, biological sex is not the only gender-related issue that should be discussed in connection to trickster tales. Gender is also connected to the adherence of trickster figures to the gender roles associated with each gender. As

Ballinger notes, most trickster figures fail to meet the expectations of the society of their gender. Male tricksters fail to be good fathers and husbands, they do not provide for their families well, fail to protect them, even sometimes bring their families into more danger.

Their missing “self-discipline, and unseemly competitiveness lead inevitably to failure as hunters. Episodes in which a trickster demonstrates his incompetence as father and provider abound” (Ballinger “Coyote, He/She Was Going There” 22). In a way, tricksters’ often sexist behaviour towards women is frequently caused by “their own failures to fulfill their gender roles.” (Ballinger “Coyote, He/She Was Going There” 21).

As unsuccessful hunters or incapable protectors of their families, male tricksters fail at their gender roles and thus are found unattractive by women. Their failures and the subsequent refusals would at least partially seem to account for the way tricksters treat women as sexual subjects without giving any regards to what the women want.

Interestingly, many trickster figures seem to be creating to a certain degree the border that separates gender. Several Native American trickster figures are credited with creating the female menstruation when they throw a piece of a blood clot or some blood at one of their female relatives so they will not have to share food with them. Similarly, in the myths of the Navajo, the Coyote trickster Atse’hashke’ causes some of the differences among the expectations of men and women such as the way marriage is proposed. While the gods plan that women should be the ones proposing to men,

Atse’hashke’ “[spoils] their plan” (O’Bryan 33) and as a cause of his actions “[men] propose marriage to women” (O’Bryan 33). The same goes for how babies are brought into the world, while the creators thought it would not be a good idea to have children the way they are born, Atse’hashke’ again goes against their wishes and establishes the way, babies are brought into the world.

Another issue connected with gender representation is crossing the line between genders. Some tricksters cross this line by simply putting on female clothes and cross- dressing. An example can be found in the story “Iktome and the Ignorant Girl”, the spider trickster Iktome decides to seduce a girl, who has “never been with a man” (Erdoes and

Ortiz 358) or even seen male reproductive organs and is absolutely oblivious to the physical differences between the two sexes. Therefore, it is not a problem for Iktome to make her believe he is also a woman, just by putting on female clothes. When the girl does see the trickster’s member, he has no problem persuading her that it is “a kind of growth, like a large wart” (Erdoes and Ortiz 358) and the result of a curse. He also persuades her that it will only disappear if he puts it between her legs. The girl concluding that women “should help each” (Erdoes and Ortiz 358) other lets him do that, and they have sex without her realising at any point that she has been tricked by the trickster

Iktome. In this story, Iktome grosses the gender boundary by dressing in women’s clothes. He does this for a reason that is very trickster-like; he does it because he wants to satisfy his sexual appetite. There are no noble reasons, he does not dress like a woman to help others, he simply wants the girl, and since she is very ignorant, she accepts

Iktome’s explanation for what his penis is and does not question his intentions.

A more elaborate way to cross this line can be seen in trickster episodes where trickster changes into the opposite sex. This way of crossing the gender line had been already mentioned in connection with Loki in subchapter 4.2. However, it will be discussed again in the following subchapter on Paul Radin’s The Trickster as the

Winnebago trickster Wakdjunkaga seem to be able to change his biological sex at will too.

5. 1 The Trickster: A Study in American Indian Mythology – A Case of Changing Sex and

Gender

A well-known trickster in the North American mythologies is Wakdjunkaga, the trickster of the Winnebago tribe. The tales of this trickster were collected in Paul Radin's book The Trickster: A Study in American Indian Mythology, where he recorded and analysed the tales of the aforementioned trickster. This work has been criticised by many scholars for wanting to “reduce Indian cultures and stories into a singular, monolithic version and explain them in such a way as to serve Amer-European needs and perspectives” (Sinclair 27); however, despite the criticism, it still remains one of the most influential works concerning Native American trickster stories.

Much of the humour in the Winnebago trickster cycle relies on the audience knowing the culture and manifests itself in the form of the trickster Wakdjunkaga defying many kinds of traditions or expectations. The whole cycle starts with him preparing to go on a warpath, even though he is a chief and as such should not partake in war under any circumstances. This is something Winnebago would know and find hilarious; “the

Winnebago trickster cycle should begin with what is essentially a satiric inversion of the warbundle ritual and the ideology and practice of warfare” (Babcock-Abrahams 175).

This beginning sets course for the whole cycle and shows that it will be full of rule- breaking and failure to meet the expected behaviour. In other words, it will be the story of a trickster. Wakdjunkaga is “Trickster, and all the characteristics that associated with him in the Trickster cycle are found here. He is untrustworthy, boastful and a gambler”

(Radin “Aspects” 26) Wakdjunkaga is fond of breaking any rules he can, without any regard for other beings. The only thing he seems to be concerned about is having his appetites fulfilled, no matter what consequences it has on others. This naturally leads to many beings the two mothers and their children he killed and ate in the episode that was mentioned in the subchapter 2. 2. At the same time, however, he is very foolish and lets others steal from him easily. Scheub’s assertion that: “Everyone attempts to come to terms with the contradictory in the trickster character” (33) seems to fit Wakdjunkaga very well as he is full of opposite traits which seem to contradict one another. He is a fool who eventually remembers what should be done and becomes a hero. Over the curse of the cycle, he also develops a lot physically and also mentally,

“the Winnebago trickster [is] driving himself and his world into a new identity” (Scheub

189). It the beginning he is very child-like, he is not aware of his own body and as such burns his own anus because he does not realise it is a part of him and burning it will also hurt him and he “eats his own intestines, but once again miraculously returns for more adventures” (Williams 128). He also proves to be void of any concert for others; the only driving force behind his actions seems to be his desire to satisfy his appetites. However, as the tales progress, he is “becoming aware of himself and the world around him” (Radin

The Trickster 135). He also develops physically, his penis, which is in the beginning of the cycle so big he has to carry it in a box with him gets has parts of it “hacked off”

(Hawley 96) through series of mishaps until it resembles a normal human one in size.

Moreover, towards the end of the cycle, Wakdjunkaga remembers that he was created for a reason “to destroy evil spirits who were molesting man” (Radin The Trickster 60) and thus he becomes a hero, who is later elevated into the upper sphere. Jung tries to explain this long wait it takes until Wakdjunkaga remembers that he is supposed to be a hero claiming that “out of a disaster can the longing for the saviour arise” (Jung 211).

Therefore, he had to go through all the mishaps before he could return to the hero he was supposed to be.

Wakdjunkaga is interesting not only for his development throughout the story but also for the way gender is portrayed in the stories. In the beginning, Wakdjunkaga might appear as a purely male trickster. There are frequent references to his penis, which is described as extremely large, at least at the beginning. It also seems to be able to function on its own, as Wakdjunkaga is able to have the penis “dispatched” (Radin The Trickster

19) across a body of water to have intercourse with a bathing woman. However, as a man, he seems to fail all the roles he is supposed to have. He is a bad father, leaving his children over and over again. The Winnebago trickster Wakdjunkaga is interesting in terms of his gender. He also has a male form the majority of the time. As a male, he is married and has children with his wife. However, he fails to provide for his family the way he is supposed to. He has to resort to behaviour that his wife is ashamed of to provide them with food, such as was mentioned in connection with imitating in 2. 7, where he tries to imitate others to obtain food, but fails each time.

As it was discussed in the previous chapter, many tricksters even if they seem to be solely male can take on a female form for a certain time period. Usually, they then return to their previous male form, as it seems to be much more practical in so many respects for tricksters to be male. Wakdjunkaga’s “sexuality knows no bounds” (Kerényi

188), including not knowing the boundaries of gender or sex. He is one of the tricksters who has this ability to change between sexes. He is often described as a very phallic character because of his penis, which is “not explicitly characteristic of all male tricksters, the image has become synecdochic for all tricksters’ licentiousness” (Ballinger “Living

Sideways” 18), and because Wakdjunkaga has this large phallus, he has to be male.

However, as Jay Cox points out in his paper “Dangerous Definitions”, when it comes to tricksters it is dangerous to try to define them in terms of their gender as it “has never been a determining factor for trickster” (19). In spite of this phallus, Wakdjunkaga cannot be defined simply as a purely male trickster. Even though he is so often described in terms of his penis, “even his sex is optional despite its phallic qualities” (Jung 203) When he decides to “His inordinate phallicism cannot limit itself to one sex alone: in the twentieth episode he cunningly contrives to become a bride and a mother – for the sake of the wedding feast and also, no doubt, for the fun of it” (Kerényi 188). Despite his apparent masculinity, at one point, he puts on female clothes and takes on the role of a woman. Even though he is often described in terms of having a gigantic member, one that he is forced to carry around in a box and therefore, one might assume that he would be a purely male trickster, at one point, he decides that it would be a great idea to change into a woman. He and his “younger brothers” (Radin The Trickster 22) are starving because it is winter and food is scarce, so the Trickster decides to change into a woman and go to a village to obtain food. He takes an “elk’s liver and [makes] a vulva from it. Then he

[takes] some elk’s kidneys and [makes] breasts from them” (Radin The Trickster 22).

Then he “[puts] on a woman’s dress.” (Radin The Trickster 23), and his change into a

“very pretty woman” (Radin The Trickster 23) is complete. “Trickster’s world has as constants destruction and re-creation; hence, the emphasis on the phallus, the emphasis on deception, disguise, and illusion. And hence, too, the trickster’s ability to move between the genders.” (Scheub 32-3) This change might seem like a case of simple cross- dressing; however, it is more complicated than that. In comparison to the aforementioned story where Iktome puts on female clothes to seduce the ignorant girl, Wakdjunkaga does more than just simply put on women’s clothes. Although Wakdjunkaga has to create the female organs from other materials, he is unable to simply change into a woman, it does not seem to pose any problems for him to be able to use those organs just like any woman would. He “[lets] the fox have intercourse with him and make him pregnant, then the jaybird and, finally, the nit.” (Radin The Trickster 23). After that, the whole company of trickster and his friends go to a village where Wakdjunkaga marries the chief’s son. He gets pregnant and “[gives] birth to a boy” (Radin The Trickster 23) and then gets pregnant again. This happens repeatedly, all the while Wakdjunkaga and his friends can lives happily in the village where they do not have to worry about food. The fact that the

Trickster is capable of getting pregnant while in the female form suggests that it is more a simple case of cross-dressing. To a certain degree, his biological sex changes, so he is able to get pregnant and give birth to children, although he had to form some of the organs from elf leftovers. Naturally, the deceit is discovered at one point. The organs he makes from the elk are not entirely a part of him as they fall off of him eventually. He is discovered when he “[jumps] over the pit and [drops] something very rotten” (Radin The

Trickster 24), which is suggested to be the female organs he made from the elk. While it is a little curious that nobody notices that he has something rotten on him until it actually falls off, the main point of this episode according to Babcock-Abrahams is the satire of the society:

The satire of tribal systems of rank and kinship and of sexual mores reaches it

culmination in Episode 9 when Wakdjunkaga disguises himself as a woman,

enters a village and marries the chief's son, bears three sons, has a joking

relationship with “his” mother-in-law, and is finally discovered and forced to flee.

(178)

She further proceeds to explain how Wakdjunkaga’s behaviour when he is in a female body continues to mock the proper behaviour that would be expected of him:

Trickster's violations are of an even more severe nature when “her” true sexual

identity is revealed in the process of joking with “her” mother-in-law, for this

means that he has engaged in homosexual practices with the chief's son, that as a

potential “son-in-law”, he has violated the strict mother-in-law avoidance, and

that he has violated prescribed joking relationships. (Babcock-Abrahams 179)

Noteworthy about her points is that she mentions the behaviour that would be expected of a male, even though at this point, Wakdjunkaga is a female, until his elk-made female sexual organs fall off. While some scholars like Jung or Kerenyi grant Wakdjunkaga the ability to transcend the gender line and not be limited by his phallicity, Babcock- Abrahams seems to be more aligned with ideas that were mentioned already in connection to Hyde that tricksters, who cross the gender boundary, even though they are able to change into a female completely are still male, only with the ability to transgress the boundary and become female for a limited time.

After his ruse is discovered, and the Trickster is forced to flee along with all his friends. He has as “a potential ‘son-in-law’, he has violated the strict mother-in-law avoidance” (Babcock-Abrahams 179). The chief’s son is very much ashamed that he has married the Trickster. Although same-sex relationships are not unheard of among Native

Americans considering the two-spirit traditions among many tribes, in this tale, the problem seems to stem rather from the embarrassment of marrying the Trickster and being duped. As such, this episode could also be seen as a cautionary tale, because as

Radin explains the “children of a chief held a very high social position and were not married to strangers” (Radin The Trickster 57). Therefore, this tale could be seen not only as a satire of the system but also as a reminder of why traditions like not marrying strangers exist and why it is important to follow them.

He then starts wondering why he is “doing all this” (Radin The Trickster 24) and decides that it is time he goes see his actual wife and son.

Tired of wandering, he crosses the lake to his real wife and child, and reintegrates

himself into village life (Episode 10). He stays until his child is grown and again

departs - once more reversing proper behavior in that it is the boy who should

start traveling (Babcock-Abrahams 179)

After a while of staying with his family, he starts desiring to travel again. Naturally, even here he defies the conventions, and his behaviour is “[quite] the reverse, of course, of the proper behaviour. It is the boy who should start travelling” (Radin The Trickster 57), not Wakdjunkaga. Thus, in his male form he continues to defy the rules and keeps failing as a father because he not only does not let his son leave and explore the world, he also leaves his family yet again.

5. 2 Tewa Tales – Examples of Female Tricksters

The trickster figure in this collection is Coyote. This trickster figure is a very wide-spread form of the trickster figure in the southwest of the United States which “takes central stage” (Erdoes and Ortiz 335) in the myths of the cultures of the Native Americans residing in “the Plains and plateau area” (Erdoes and Ortiz 335). The popularity of a

Coyote as a trickster is so wide that a similar trickster figure appears even in the Aztec pantheon in the form of the mischievous “Aztec god of music, dance and singing” (210)

Huehuecoyotl who shares some traits with the Coyote trickster figure of North American

Native People figure as well. The popularity of this figure also makes this trickster hard to describe as there appear minor variations even within the same the culture, let alone among all the cultures who have a Coyote trickster figure in their oral literature.

Moreover, female trickster figures in the forms of female Coyotes tend to appear in these regions as well in tribes where women traditionally held positions of power: “The most obvious fact we should note about stories with female tricksters is that they are all from matrilineal and/or matrilocal tribes” (Ballinger “Coyote, He/She Was Going There” 25).

Interestingly, some of the trickster stories feature this trickster in two forms – one with a male trickster, the other one with a female trickster – suggesting that these tales are not specific to either sex.

In most of the trickster Coyote stories in the Tewa Tales, he behaves like a fool.

He takes on the role the hero-trickster only by accident. For example, Coyote old man is supposed to bring fire to the others, but they decide not to tell him what they want him to do and instead tie a bundle of wood to Coyote’s tail and when “he put his tail into the fire, it [catches] on fire” (Parsons 144). When Coyote old man realises what the others did and that he needs to bring the fire to his people and runs away with the fire on his tail and manages to bring it home. However, the important part of stealing the fire from the other tribe is done only by accident.

He is also one of the trickster figures, who always driven by their hunger. Many of Coyote’s adventures are in some way fuelled by Coyote’s appetite. He often tries to trick the others so he can eat them or steal their food, but many times his efforts backfire, especially when he becomes greedy. At one point, two little rabbits are at Coyote’s mercy.

However, they manage to talk him into throwing them into “some woods” (Parsons 163), so they can catch bigger ones for Coyote. However, the little rabbits cheat Coyote and run away as soon as they can and instead of having two little rabbits, he ends up having nothing, because he wanted more.

He is shown to be failing at what is expected from him as a husband and man all the time. For example, in the story “Coyote Marries and Cannot Build a house” two girls who refuse to marry their other suitors are approached by Coyote who gives them berries and sings them a pretty song. Despite the warnings that Coyote will not be a good husband, one of the girls decides to marry Coyote, even though he does not have a house where they could live together after marriage. After some time, the girl starts being annoyed that her husband is not building any house for them and starts complaining about it. In the end, Coyote makes a hole in the ground and proclaims that he “[does]not know how to build a house and [that hole] is [his] home” (Parsons 147). However, his bride is dissatisfied, because they would not be able to live in a “house” like that leave him. In this story, Coyote fails as a husband, as it was expected of him to build a house “as Tewa men often do” (Parsons 147) when they get married. While the repercussions of this failure are relatively harmless for the trickster, there are also stories where his shortcomings as a husband and father have much more dire consequences, some of which will be discussed within this chapter.

Attempts to imitate others can be found in this collection as well. One example can be found in the episode where tries to imitate Bird Girls and join them in flight. Since a Coyote cannot fly on his own, each of the Bird Girls lends a feather to Coyote. However,

Coyote has problems, and eventually falls, sometimes to his death. This episode is noteworthy from a range of perspectives. This myth is very wide-spread and thus can be found in a variety of versions. In one of them, before the Birds Girls and the Coyote start flying, they work on grinding corn. This is considered a feminine task, however, the trickster does not have to be female in all the variants, so in some cases, a male trickster might end up doing female work.

Moreover, there are versions of this myth that features a female Coyote. In Boas’

Keresan Texts, this episode can be found with Coyote-girl as the main character. In the episode “Coyote and the Blackbird Girls”, a female Coyote approaches Blackbird girls, as she wants to join them in their song and grinding. Since she wants to join them, she collects some juniper berries; however, the Blackbird Girls decide to steal them from her.

Later on, when they are finished with their work, the Blackbird girls decide to fly away.

Since Coyote cannot fly, they decide to each “pull” (Boas 162) a feather and give it to her so that she can do it with them. Unfortunately for Coyote, they change their minds and take their feathers back and fly away. Coyote-girl thus ends up stranded on a place she cannot get away from because it is too high. A kind Old-Woman-Spider offers to help Coyote-girl get away from that place, as long as she follows her instructions and “[does] not look up” (Boas 163). Coyote naturally does not follow the rule and ends up falling to her death. Then she is brought back to life again by Badger-Old-Man, but instead of making good use of being alive again, she decides to get her revenge on the Blackbird

Girls. This backfires as on her way to them, she encounters a trap, but does not recognise it is a trap and “it [kills] her” (Boas 164).

The Coyote-girl manifests several typical trickster traits similar to her male counterpart. First, she lets herself get tricked out of her berries by the Blackbird Girls.

Then she tries to imitate the Blackbird girls, “that her blundering imitations take her into unfamiliar territory where she doesn't belong” (Ballinger “Coyote, He/She Was Going

There” 27) and since she is not a bird, she lands herself in trouble. When the Old—

Woman-Spider takes pity on her and decides to help, she does so only if Coyote girl does not look up. However, Coyote-girl does not follow the rule, and she is killed as a result.

Even though she is brought back to life again, and manages to cross the life and death boundary, she does not stop behaving like a trickster. She finds a nice piece of meat lying around and unable to resist, she tries to eat it only to be killed again immediately. As it turns out, the meat was part of a trap meant to kill whoever tries to take it, and Coyote fell for it.

In terms of gender, it is notable that the trickster is seen doing a specifically female activity, grinding corn. In this way, he defies cultural gender expectations once again.

However, even more interesting about this story is that it occurs in various versions.

While it is quite normal for one myth to appear in numerous versions across different cultures, it is not as frequent that the same myth appears both with a male and a female trickster. Nonetheless, several of the Coyote tales have versions with tricksters of both sexes.

As Ballinger discusses in his paper on gender in Native American myths, male tricksters tend to fail at their roles as fathers by not being able to provide for their families or directly into danger. Female tricksters seem to be no different in these aspects. They are incapable of taking care of their young properly, unable to procure enough food or water, and at times the female tricksters seem to be even responsible for the deaths of their children. “While none of these female tricksters share the sexual appetites of their male counterparts, they do wander and, therefore, fail to fulfil gender expectations for women as mothers that provide communal stability” (J. H. Cox 254). Examples of this behaviour can be found in several myths of Parsons collected. One of them would be the story where Coyote Woman goes hunting with Porcupine. They catch several rabbits; however, Coyote Woman does not want to share and therefore imprisons Porcupine in a rabbit hole thinking Porcupine will die there and leaves with all the dead rabbits to feed her children. However, Porcupine manages to get out of the hole and wants to have revenge for Coyote’s behaviour. She manages to kill an elk, and it does not take long before Coyote Woman notices the dead elk and approaches Porcupine. Eventually, she tries to kill Porcupine again, but, yet again, she fails. Not knowing that Coyote woman leaves to fetch her children so that they can take the dead elk home together. In the meantime, Porcupine carries all the mean onto a tree, where she starts eating it. When the

Coyote family arrives, they are unable to reach the meat. Porcupine then proposes that they put a blanket over themselves and she will give the Coyotes some of the meat.

Instead of that, she throws a big and heavy elk bone onto them, killing Coyote Woman and almost all her children immediately. Only one of the baby Coyotes survives only to be killed by the Porcupine moments later. Coyote Woman displays some of the typical trickster traits in this story. She is very selfish when it comes to food, and thus she tries to kill Porcupine twice to avoid having to share the meat with Porcupine. She prefers killing her friend instead of splitting the meat with her so that Coyote can keep all the food for herself and her children. However, she fails both times when she tries to do that.

She also displays foolish behaviour when she trusts Porcupine, even though she tried to kill her several times. As a mother, Coyote Woman “miserably she fails to meet the demands of her role” (Ballinger “Coyote, He/She Was Going There” 27). She not only is unable to provide the food for the on her own, but she also leads her children towards danger, when she decided to take the elk from the seemingly dead Porcupine. Ultimately her tricksterish behaviour, her selfishness and lack of consideration for others lead to the death of her whole family.

This is another example of a story that can have tricksters of both sexes, as it also appears in variations with both a male and a female trickster. A similar story appears among the Nez Percé people. In that story, Coyote “cheats Porcupine in a rivalry for a buffalo carcass. He fetches his wife and children to help him carry home all of the meat rather than just taking home what he can carry. However, Porcupine kills them all.”

(Ballinger “Coyote, He/She Was Going There” 22). Just like the female Coyote in

Parson’s version, this Coyote also has to pay along with his whole family for his own insatiability. Ballinger recounts this story in connection to Coyote’s failure to behave like a good father and thus failing his gender role. Similarly, the female Coyote is a bad mother and thus fails at her gender role.

An even more tragical case of a female trickster in her role as a mother can be found in the story “Coyote Woman Cannot Revive Her Children” where Coyote woman gets tricked into eating her children. The story starts with a Salion, a “little brown bird, living in the rocks” (Parsons 291), teaching her children how to fly. To do this, she would throw out some bones, and the little birds would “fly out” (Parsons 291). However, when

Coyote asks about what Salion is doing, the latter lies and tells Coyote, she is killing her children and then calls them, and they come back to life. Intrigued by this, Coyote decides that she must “go and get [her] children and kill them and eat them and [she will] throw out their bones and they [will] come back to life again” (Parsons 291). She does what she has decided to do and, however, when she calls her children to come back to life, they do not. Salion then warns her children that there is a bad Coyote mother living nearby who killed and ate her own children. The Female Coyote in this story shows several traits typical for a trickster figure. She is not the ideal mother right from the beginning, although she tries. She is not able to provide them with food every day “sometimes she [gets] nothing for them, sometimes she kills something for them to eat” (Parsons 291). A more serious failure is when she takes Salion’s word for what the latter does. Coyote lets Salion fool her, she does not realise that because they are birds, the children of Salion just fly in when she throws the bones out. When she tries to imitate Salion’s behaviour; she ends up murdering and eating her children. Although she has no cruel intentions to hurt anybody and simply believes that her children will come back, she ends up failing at her role of a mother.

5. 3 Summary

Even though trickster figures are often treated as males, it would be a mistake to expect tricksters to respect any category, including this one. As J. Cox explains: to deny trickster the potential to be female does not limit trickster's capacity for

sexual vagary; such denial only demonstrates the gullibility of academic

classification of the unclassifiable. Female coyotes are not unknown in either

traditional or contemporary Native American literatures. (18)

Tricksters are constant rule breakers. No advice, law or rule, no boundary is safe from them, including the boundary between the two sexes and rules of proper behaviour based on gender. This applies to Native American trickster tales just like it applied to the three tricksters that were analysed in the previous chapter. In Native American trickster myths, gender and also sex boundaries are crossed very frequently. It could be seen on the example of Iktome, who simply put on female clothing to change himself into a woman.

It could also be seen on the example of Wakdjunkaga who “can turn himself into a woman and bear children” (Jung 203), showing that even a role as feminine as giving birth to children can be taken on by a trickster, who spends most of his time as a male. Therefore, claiming that he simply has a special ability to change into a woman temporarily, but is actually male seems to be a simplification. Considering his ability to give birth, he seems more like a figure, who has the option to choose its’ sex at will and simply chooses to stay male most of the time.

Moreover, tribal societies “have based their social systems, however diverse, on ritual, spirit-centered, woman-focused world-views” (Allen). As it was shown in the previous subchapter, in some of the societies women have high social status, and therefore, these societies have the ideal conditions for female tricksters to appear in their oral traditions. It is noteworthy that the known trickster stories that feature a female trickster usually show her in the context of her family, and more importantly, how she fails as a mother. Since “trickster stories are significant instruments for enforcing tribal sexual and gender conventions” (J. H. Cox 254), these episodes could be viewed as ways to stress the importance of being a good mother in a tricksterish manner which shows the risks when one is not.

Considering that some of the trickster stories appear in versions with both male and female tricksters, the speculation that there are more trickster stories with female tricksters which are unknown to the people outside of tribes seems quite plausible. The stories that appear in both forms suggest that at least some trickster stories are not specific to one gender and can have both a male and female main characters.

Conclusion

The aim of this thesis was to discuss the portrayal of gender – and to a degree also biological sex – in trickster myths with the focus on Paul Radin’s The Trickster: A Study in American Indian Mythology and Elsie Clews Parsons’ Tewa Tales. These were supplemented with myths from other collections of Native American myths to stress out the various aspects of gender in trickster tales. In conclusion, it could be said that gender is a very complex issue in trickster tales, but it undeniably plays a very important role in many of these stories.

The collection Tewa Tales is interesting from the point of view of gender as female tricksters appear in the collection. Female trickster figures, they seem to be rarer than male trickster figures. However, they do exist especially among Native American tribes that have matrilineal or matrilocal systems, including the myths of the s. However, despite the favourable environment, female trickster figures still have to face challenges that the males do not seem to have to face. They differ from their male counterparts in some respects. They tend to be less sexual than their male counterparts, and they also take on the role of a wanderer less frequently. This could be caused by the role of women in society as women were expected to provide stability for their families. Moreover, the fact that female tricksters would have been more likely to get pregnant than male tricksters seems like a popular and believable explanation for the smaller sexual appetite of female tricksters. They are also connected frequently to stories that centre around tricksters’ failures in their gender roles. A reoccurring female trickster figure is woman coyote. She appears in myths of matrilineal Hopi and Tewa tribes, who usually appears in the context of being a bad mother. She is not capable of taking care of her babies properly and often becomes the reason they die. This seems to be in line with the role of tricksters as reinforcers of rules as these female Coyote trickster tales remind the audience about the importance of doing ones’ roles properly.

The question of femininity is also a very popular and complex part of the whole question of gender representation in trickster tales and is limited not only to female tricksters. Frequently the analysis of gender in mythical stories is limited to the portrayal of the tricksters’ biological sex and episodes where gender is made questionable are dismissed. Although trickster figure that could be considered explicitly female are quite rare, even gender of the tricksters who were traditionally considered male can be questioned. This also pertains to the Winnebago trickster Wakdjunkaga, who appears in

Radin’s cycle. As eternal boundary crossers, tricksters are impossible to define in terms of closed categories of gender. They cross the gender boundary by means that range from being as simple as putting on a women’s dress to as elaborate as changing into women or other female beings. Tricksters cross the gender line quite frequently in many forms. This can be as simple as putting on a woman’s dress and pretend to be a woman as Iktome does when he wants to seduce the ignorant girl. However, this transformation into a woman might be much more elaborate. Many tricksters show quite strong feminine qualities, even some of the well-known trickster figures are considered to be solely male.

However, there is often a feminine side to them, direct or indirect that tends to be ignored.

Tricksters who were for a very long time analysed as phallic figures frequently have a feminine side to them. This was demonstrated on the examples of the Yoruba trickster

Esu as well as on the Native American trickster Wakdjunkaga. Esu, who has been often described in terms of an exaggerated phallicism, is often depicted as a dual male and female character that has traits of both male and female figures. Similarly, Wakdjunkaga, who is also described usually as a phallic deity because of his penis, shows that distinction between sexes in trickster figures is not clear cut. He is able to perform the most feminine activity and give birth to several children. Therefore, to claim that trickster figures are male because their male side is more pronounced and better known is inaccurate.

Gender in mythology is a much broader term than simply searching for female trickster figures, although the biological sex is an inseparable and important part of this question. This causes them to fail in their prescribed roles as well. As can be seen in both collections, tricksters generally fail to fulfil the expectations that are linked to each gender. Male tricksters fail in their prescribed roles on a regular basis, they fail to provide for their families, they fail to keep them safe, and as demonstrated on the example of

Wakdjunkaga, they can also rob their children of their opportunity to travel the world.

Female tricksters share the inability to conform to the expectations of society just like male tricksters have. Female Coyote fails as a mother in the worst possible way and kills and eats her children.

This thesis has shown that it is difficult to analyse trickster tales from the side of their gender, as these characters are very complex and frequently two-sided characters, who can blend both male and female qualities. However, several ways gender in trickster tales can be approached are shown in this thesis. This can be done from the point of view of the biological sex, the adherence to expected gender-related behaviour or a superficial transgression of the gender line. It should be noted that conclusions that were drawn in this thesis were drawn specifically from the myths that have been discussed. Therefore, these conclusions might not pertain to other trickster figures or even versions of these myths that originated in other regions or were told by other informants. Nonetheless, this thesis features an analysis of several meaningful examples can serve as basis for a more in-depth analysis of the representation of gender in trickster tales in various cultures.

Works Cited:

Primary:

Parsons, Elsie Worthington Clews. Tewa Tales. New York: American Folk-Lore

Society, 1926. HathiTrust Digital Library.

Radin, Paul. The Trickster: A Study in American Indian Mythology. Schocken Book,

1972.

Secondary:

Allen, Paula Gunn. The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian

Traditions. Open Road, 2015.

Babcock, Barbara. “Arrange Me into Disorder: Fragments and Reflections on Ritual

Clowning.” Rite, Drama, Festival, Spectacle: Rehearsals toward a Theory of

Cultural Performance, edited by John J. MacAloon, Institute for the Study of

Human Issues, 1984, pp. 102–128.

Babcock, Barbara, and Jay Cox. “The Native American Trickster.” Handbook of Native

American Literature, edited by Andrew Wiget, Garland, 1994, pp. 99–106.

Babcock-Abrahams, Barbara. “‘A Tolerated Margin of Mess’: The Trickster and His

Tales Reconsidered.” Journal of the Folklore Institute, vol. 11, no. 3, Mar. 1975,

pp. 147–186. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3813932. Ballinger, Franchot. “Ambigere: The Euro-American Picaro and the Native American

Trickster.” MELUS, vol. 17, no. 1, 1991, pp. 21–38. JSTOR,

www.jstor.com/stable/467321.

---. “Coyote, He/She Was Going There: Sex and Gender in Native American Trickster

Stories.” Studies in American Indian Literatures, vol. 12, no. 4, 2000, pp. 15–43.

JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20736987.

---. “Living Sideways: Social Themes and Social Relationships in Native American

Trickster Tales.” American Indian Quarterly, vol. 13, no. 1, 1989, pp. 15–30.

JSTOR, doi:10.2307/1184084.

Bear, Tracy, and Paul L. Gareau. “Worldview.” Coursera, University of Alberta, 2015.

Boas, Franz. Keresan Texts. American Ethnological Society, 1928.

Carroll, Michael P. “The Trickster as Selfish-Buffoon and Culture Hero.” Ethos, vol.

12, no. 2, 1984, pp. 105–131. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/639961.

Cox, James H. “Living Sideways: Tricksters in American Indian Oral Traditions.

Franchot Ballinger. Norman: U of Oklahoma P, 2004. 212 pages. $32.95 cloth.”

MELUS, vol. 30, no. 2, 2005, pp. 252–255. JSTOR, doi:10.1093/melus/30.2.252.

Cox, Jay. “Dangerous Definitions: Female Tricksters in Contemporary Native

American Literature.” Wicazo Sa Review, vol. 5, no. 2, 1989, pp. 17–21. JSTOR,

doi:10.2307/1409399.

Erdoes, Richard, and Alfonso Ortiz. American Indian Myths and Legends. Pantheon

Books, 2017. Fagan, Kristina. “What’s the Trouble with the Trickster?: An Introduction.” Troubling

Tricksters: Revisioning Critical Conversations, edited by Linda M. Morra and

Deanna Reder, Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2010, pp. 3–20. EBSCO,

ezproxy.muni.cz/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&

AuthType=ip,cookie,uid&db=nlebk&AN=322899&lang=cs&site=eds-

live&scope=site&ebv=EB&ppid=pp_v.

Garner, Bryan A. “Sexism.” Garner's Modern English Usage, by Bryan A. Garner,

Oxford University Press, 2016, pp. 821–824.

Gates, Henry Louis. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African American Literary

Criticism. Oxford UP, 1988.

Grădinaru, Ioan-Alexandru. “The Ways of the Trickster: Meaning, Discourse and

Cultural Blasphemy.” Argumentum: Journal the Seminar of Discursive Logic,

Argumentation Theory and Rhetoric, University of Iaşi, 2012, pp. 85–96.

Hamilton, Edith. Mythology. Back Bay Books, 1942.

Hawley, Steven. “Making Metaphor Happen: Space, Time and Trickster Sign.” Arizona

Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory, vol. 64, no. 2,

2008, pp. 95–122. ProQuest, doi:10.1353/arq.0.0003.

Hyde, Lewis. Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth, and Art. North Point Press,

1999.

Hynes, William J., and William G. Doty, editors. Mythical Trickster Figures: Contours,

Contexts, and Criticisms. U of Alabama P, 1993. Jung, C. G., and R. F. C. Hull. “On the Psychology of the Trickster Figure.” The

Trickster: a Study in American Indian Mythology, by Paul Radin, Schocken Book,

1972, pp. 195–211.

Jurich, Marilyn. Scheherazade's Sisters: Trickster Heroines and Their Stories in World

Literature. Greenwood Press, 1998.

Kerényi, Karl, and Paul Radin. “The Trickster in Relation to Greek Mythology.” The

Trickster: a Study in American Indian Mythology by Paul Radin, Schocken Book,

1972, pp. 173–191.

Landay, Lori. Madcaps, Screwballs, and Con Women: The Female Trickster in

American Culture. U of Pennsylvania P, 1998.

Lock, Helen. “Transformations of the Trickster.” Southern Cross Review, 2002.

Mills, Margaret A. “The Gender of the Trick: Female Tricksters and Male Narrators.”

Asian Folklore Studies, vol. 60, no. 2, 2001, pp. 237–258. EBSCOhost,

doi:10.2307/1179056.

O'Bryan, Aileen. The Dîné: Origin Myths of the Navaho Indians. Smithsonian

Institution, 1956. Internet Sacred Text Archive.

Ogundipe, Ayodele. “Chapter 5: The Role and Function of Esu in Yoruba.” Esu

Elegbara: Chance, Uncertainly In Yoruba Mythology, by Ayodele Ogundipe,

Kwara State UP, 2012, pp. 87–112.

Phelan, Shane. “Coyote Politics: Trickster Tales and Feminist Futures.” Wiley on Behalf

of Hypatia, Inc., 1996, pp. 130–149. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3810325. Půtová, Barbora. “Historical Changes of the Coyote: An Anthropological Reflection on

the Trickster.” Identity, Tradition, and Revitalization of American Indian

Cultures, edited by Barbora Půtová, Karolinum Press, 2017, pp. 203–214.

EBSCO,

ezproxy.muni.cz/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&

AuthType=ip,cookie,uid&db=nlebk&AN=1556217&lang=cs&site=eds-

live&scope=site&ebv=EB&ppid=pp_6.

Radin, Paul. “Literary Aspects of Winnebago Mythology.” The Journal of American

Folklore, vol. 39, no. 151, 1926, pp. 18–52. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/534968.

Scheub, Harold. Trickster and Hero Two Characters in the Oral and Written Traditions

of the World. University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. EBSCO.

Sinclair, Niigonwedom James. “Trickster Reflections: Part I.” Troubling Tricksters :

Revisioning Critical Conversations, edited by Linda M. Morra and Deanna Reder,

Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2010, pp. 21–58. EBSCO,

ezproxy.muni.cz/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&

AuthType=ip,cookie,uid&db=nlebk&AN=322899&lang=cs&site=eds-

live&scope=site&ebv=EB&ppid=pp_iv.

Soyinka, Wole. Myth, Literature, and the African World. Cambridge UP, 1992.

Sturluson, Snorri. The Prose Edda. Translated by Jean I. Young, University of

California P, 1966.

Swanton, John Reed. Tlingit Myths and Texts. Government Printing Office, 1909.

Internet Sacred Text Archive. von Schnurbein, Stefanie. “The Function of Loki in Snorri Sturluson's ‘Edda.’” History

of Religions, vol. 40, no. 20, Nov. 2000, pp. 109–124. JSTOR,

http://www.jstor.com/stable/3176617.

Williams, David. The Trickster Brain: Neuroscience, Evolution, and Narrative.

Lexington Books, 2012. EBSCOhost.

“What Is Gender? What Is Sex?” Canadian Institutes of Health Research, 28 Apr.

2020, cihr-irsc.gc.ca/e/48642.html.

Summary

This Master’s Diploma thesis focuses on the portrayal of gender in Native

American trickster myths with the focus on two collections of Native American myths, namely Paul Radin’s The Trickster: A Study in American Indian Mythology and Elsie

Clews Parson’s Tewa Tales. Trickster figures are very popular characters which appear in the myths of cultures all around the world. This character is notoriously known for breaking any kind or rule that can be broken and crossing any boundary that is available.

The aim of this thesis is to analyse how gender is portrayed in these two collections. Various forms of crossing the boundary of gender or biological sex in these stories are discussed. Another topic that is discussed are female trickster, who are seemingly rarer than their male counterparts. The first chapter discusses what a trickster figure is. The second chapter features a description of the most common and most widely spread trickster traits which seem to pertain to most trickster figures. The third chapter provides an explanation why trickster tales are so important for the cultures of Native

Americans. The last two chapters deal with the portrayal of gender in myths, The first of these two features examples from various cultures of the world such as the Greek trickster

Hermes, Germanic trickster Loki or the African trickster Esu. The second of these two chapters focuses on the trickster figures in Native American cultures with the focus on the collections by Radin and Clews.

Resumé

Tématem práce je zobrazení genderu ve dvou sbírkách mýtů původních obyvatel

Ameriky, konkrétně The Trickster: A Study in American Indian Mythology od Paula

Radina a Tewa Tales od Elsie Clews Parsons. Šprýmař je populární archetyp mýtické postavy, který se objevuje v mýtech různých kultur po celém světě. Tato postava je notoricky známá svou oblibou porušovat jakákoliv pravidla a překračovat různé typy hranic včetně hranice mezi gendery a pohlavími.

Cílem této práce je analýza zobrazení genderu ve dvou výše zmíněných sbírkách.

Práce zkoumá různé podoby překračování hranice mezi gendery a pohlavími, se kterými se může čtenář v těchto svou sbírkách setkat, a také zobrazením ženských šprýmařek, které se objevují zdánlivě méně často než jejich mužské protějšky. V první kapitole je vysvětleno, jakou postavou je šprýmař. Ve druhé kapitole jsou vyjmenovány a popsány nejdůležitější a nejčastější vlastnosti šprýmařů, které jsou vlastní většině těchto postav.

Třetí kapitola vysvětluje, proč jsou mýty o šprýmařích důležité v kulturách původních obyvatel Ameriky. Poslední dvě kapitoly jsou pak věnované zobrazení genderu v mýtech.

Předposlední kapitola rozebírá zobrazení genderu ve spojení se šprýmaři z různých světových kultur, například s řeckým bohem Hermem, germánským šprýmařem Lokim nebo africkým šprýmařem Esu. Poslední kapitola se pak věnuje zobrazení genderu v mýtech původních obyvatel Ameriky, zejména v již zmíněných sbírkách od Radina a

Clews.