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Gender in Trickster Tales

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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
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