and their place in
Storytelling
Trickster tales
are short, imaginative narratives that usually
use anthropromorphic animal characters to convey folk wisdom and to
help us understand human nature and develop proper human behavior.
Trickster tales can be grouped into 4 distinct themes:
-
Amusing
Tales
-
Tales with Morals
-
Aetiological or Pourquoi
Tales – accounting for how things came to be
-
Etymological Tales –
accounting for how things came to be named
Trickster tales appear in
literature
back to the beginning of recorded time. Before that, they were passed
from one generation to the next through oral tradition. The tales that
Aesop told were traced back to India. The Greeks and Romans later wrote
down his tales.
People around the world do not use
the
term “trickster”. This term was introduced in 1874 by a Catholic
missionary Father Albert Lacombe's translation of the Cree buffoon
figure, Wisakejak as "trickster" or "deceiver".
Trickster
resources are abundant and I've chosen to create annotated
bibliographies:
Single
trickster tale books: concentrating on those trickster tales where
tricksters get tricked
Anthologies: containing
trickster tales from around the world
High John Tales: slave tales that have
been passed down through the oral tradition in the United States.
For
researching activities for children when presenting trickster tales, I
would recommend Folktale
Themes and Activities for Children, Volumes 1 and 2. The first
volume is Pourquoi Tales; the second is Trickster Tales. The author is
Anne Marie Kraus. There are countless resources and texts listed in the
volumes that are helpful to present the tales to the next generation of
tricksters.
I will continue to add to these annotated bibliographies as a
storytelling resource. Enjoy!
Kathy Hempel
409LE Storytelling
Spring, 2005
