Coyote (and Other Tricksters)

Native American literature is known not only for creation myths but also for trickster figures such as Coyote, Raven, and Rabbit. The picture of the coyote above is from Wikimedia Commons.

To begin with, here is the site where I found the Mayan tale "Coyote and The Hen" and the story of "Coyote's Adventures in Idaho" as well as stories about the other tricksters.  I really like that this site notes where a number of tales come from. 

http://www.ilhawaii.net/~stony/loreindx.html

To find out which stories come from our area, here is a map.  Click on each state to find out which tribes, for example, lived in Maryland.

http://www.native-languages.org/states.htm

On the other hand, this page lists the names of the tribes. 

http://www.native-languages.org/languages.htm#alpha

Here a professor from Pittsburg State University in Kansas discusses the trickster in Native American culture.  This site also contains links to various tribes' stories about Coyote. 

http://members.cox.net/academia/coyote.html

The author of this site from the College of the Siskiyous in California discusses Native American traditional prose narratives in general:

http://www.siskiyous.edu/Shasta/fol/nat/index.htm

(The picture above is from Trinity University's online journal on trickster studies.)

For more detailed information, see Wyman P. Meinzer's contribution to a 1995 symposium on the coyote in the American Southwest:

http://texnat.tamu.edu/symposia/coyote/p30.htm

Here are a few more stories about Coyote:

http://www.americanfolklore.net/folktales/wa.html

http://www.shoshoneindian.com/legend_001.htm

http://www.siskiyous.edu/Shasta/fol/nat/flood.htm

http://www.siskiyous.edu/Shasta/fol/nat/coyote.htm

  

Other trickster figures are Raven and Rabbit.  As you will see below, different tribes in different regions had their tricksters.  The picture of Raven is from the Canadian Museum of Civilization Corporation's website:

For more information about Gordon Miller's watercolor, see this link below: 

http://www.civilization.ca/cmc/exhibitions/aborig/nwca/nwcam11e.shtml

In the Southeastern U.S., Rabbit was the trickster.   The picture below is from Professor Tina L. Hanlon's web page on Appalachian Animal Tales/Native American Tales from Appalachia at Ferrum College in Virginia.

Here is a link to Professor Hanlon's article: 

http://www.ferrum.edu/applit/bibs/tales/rabbitotter.htm

Then once you move to Africa and the Caribbean, the trickster is Anansi the Spider.  In South Carolina, this figure is called Aunt Nancy.  I wish that I could find a picture of her!

Tricksters appear in other cultures' stories as well.  Reynard the Fox, a figure from French folktales, is depicted below.  (The picture comes from Wikimedia Commons, but it originally appeared in a children's book from the 1860s.)

On Joseph Campbell (Crossposting from EN 201)

This afternoon, after our class today, I realized that this entry from my EN 201 blog could be useful as we consider Marlow and his quest in Heart of Darkness. I like to show a tape of Moyers' interview with him in EN 201 because it sets up a useful, modern definition of the hero and the quest that may well explain our discomfort with Gilgamesh and Achilles as heroes. Additionally, Campbell studied so many cultures that he provides a good model for our approach to world literature this semester. (It's true, though, that scholars have criticized Campbell for being too much of a generalist, but at our level, a generalist is probably more helpful to us than a specialist would be.)

First of all, here is a biography of Joseph Campbell from the Joseph Campbell Foundation:

http://www.jcf.org/about_jc.php

This essay was written by a student of Campbell and includes some recollections about him:
http://www.folkstory.com/campbell/campbell.html

Here is an outline of Campbell's "stages of the hero's journey." It's the same handout that I gave you today (Monday 1/28).  Compare these stages to the sequence of events in Heart of Darkness and other works that we read this semester.

http://ias.berkeley.edu/orias/hero/JourneyStages.pdf

FYAmuse, Campbell's work also influenced George Lucas' initial Star Wars movies. Campbell, in turn, had been influenced by Carl Jung's theories of psychology and Mircea Eliade's history and philosophy of religions. For more information about Jung, see the site below:

http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/jung.html

For more information about Eliade, see the site below:

http://www.westminster.edu/staff/brennie/eliade/mebio.htm

If you are interested in writing or storytelling, this site from Maricopa Community College in Arizona could be worth exploring.

http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/smc/journey/

Below are some critiques of Campbell's work and his approach. The first is from a Christian perspective. The second responds to concerns that Christian theologians have with Campbell and the study of mythology.
http://logosresourcepages.org/FalseTeachings/campbell.htm
http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=171

Here is a defense of Campbell's work and approach, also from The Christian Century. This defense mentions Campbell's use of Jungian psychology as well as the extent to which Campbell is misread and to which he misread Jung.

http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=766

From what's out there, Joseph Campbell and his work or his influence might be a good topic for an annotated bibliography--or a presentation!