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The Spider (trickster symbolism)
May 23, 2010, 03:35:11 PM
Trickster
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In mythology, and in the study of folklore and religion, a trickster is a god, goddess, spirit, man, woman, or anthropomorphic animal (often a Rabbit or Hare) who plays tricks or otherwise disobeys normal rules and conventional behavior.

The trickster, in later folklore or modern popular culture, is a clever, mischievous person or creature, who survives in a dangerous world through use of trickery.

Characteristics

Hynes and Doty, in Mythical Trickster Figures (1997) state that every trickster has several of the following six traits:
1. fundamentally ambiguous and anomalous
2. deceiver and trick-player
3. shape-shifter (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login)
4. situation-inverter
5. messenger and imitator of the gods
6. sacred and lewd bricoleur

Examples of fictional tricksters

Anansi - the spider trickster of African origin
Brer Rabbit - a slave trickster of African origin
Harvey the pooka - a large anthropomorphic rabbit who can be seen only by the protagonist
Reynard - a You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login who plays a central role in the moralistic fables of the Reynard Cycle
Peter Pan - regularly plays tricks on his enemies, specifically Captain Hook
Tom Sawyer - Mark Twain's famous troublemaker who surprises everyone at his own funeral
Huckleberry Finn - He fakes his own death and is constantly assuming different identities
Bugs Bunny - a rabbit trickster, in some respects similar to Brer Rabbit
Felix the Cat - a "transgressor of boundaries" (in the most literal sense)

[youtube:1k80qg69]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SP410Sv-b2E[/youtube:1k80qg69]

Mythology

The trickster deity breaks the rules of the gods or nature, sometimes maliciously but usually, albeit unintentionally, with ultimately positive effects. Often, the rule-breaking takes the form of tricks or thievery. Tricksters can be cunning or foolish or both; they are often funny even when considered sacred or performing important cultural tasks. An example of this is the sacred Heyoka, whose role is to play tricks and games and by doing so raises awareness and acts as an equalizer.
Frequently the Trickster figure exhibits gender and form variability, changing gender roles and engaging in same-sex practices. Such figures appear in Native American and First Nations mythologies, where they are said to have a two-spirit nature. Loki, the Norse trickster, also exhibits gender variability, in one case even becoming pregnant; interestingly, he shares the ability to change genders with Odin, the chief Norse deity who also possesses many characteristics of the Trickster. In the case of Loki's pregnancy, he was forced by the Gods to stop a giant from erecting a wall for them before 7 days passed; he solved the problem by transforming into a mare and drawing the giant's magical horse away from its work. He returned some time later with a child he had given birth to—the eight-legged horse Sleipnir, who served as Odin's steed.

In some cultures, there are dualistic myths, featuring two demiurges creating the world, or two culture heroes arranging the world — in a complementary manner. Dualistic cosmologies are present in all inhabited continents and show great diversity: they may feature culture heroes, but also demiurges (exemplifying a dualistic creation myth in the latter case), or other beings; the two heroes may compete or collaborate; they may be conceived as neutral or contrasted as good versus evil; be of the same importance or distinguished as powerful versus weak; be brothers (even twins) or be not relatives at all.

Archetype

In modern literature the trickster survives as a character archetype, not necessarily supernatural or divine, sometimes no more than a stock character.
In later folklore, the trickster/clown is incarnated as a clever, mischievous man or creature, who tries to survive the dangers and challenges of the world using trickery and deceit as a defense. He also is known for entertaining people as a clown does. More modern and obvious examples of that type are Bugs Bunny and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login (Charlie Chaplin) and Pippi Longstocking.

[youtube:1k80qg69]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ps6ck1ejoAw&feature=PlayList&p=C29AB45235CD2649&playnext_from=PL&playnext=1&index=22[/youtube:1k80qg69]

The trickster's literary role

Modern African American literary criticism has turned the trickster figure into one example of how it is possible to overcome a system of oppression from within. For years, African American literature was discounted by the greater community of American literary criticism while its authors were still obligated to use the language and the rhetoric of the very system that relegated African Americans and other minorities to the ostracized position of the cultural “other.” The central question became one of how to overcome this system when the only words available were created and defined by the oppressors. As Audre Lorde explained, the problem was that “the master’s tools [would] never dismantle the master’s house.”

In his writings of the late 1980s, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. presents the concept of Signifyin(g). Wound up in this theory is the idea that the “master’s house” can be “dismantled” using his “tools” if the tools are used in a new or unconventional way. To demonstrate this process, Gates cites the interactions found in African American narrative poetry between the trickster, the Signifying Monkey, and his oppressor, the Lion. According to Gates, the “Signifying Monkey” is the “New World figuration” and “functional equivalent” of the Eshu trickster figure of African Yoruba mythology. The Lion functions as the authoritative figure in his classical role of “King of the Jungle.” He is the one who commands the Signifying Monkey’s movements. Yet the Monkey is able to outwit the Lion continually in these narratives through his usage of figurative language. According to Gates, “[T]he Signifying Monkey is able to signify upon the Lion because the Lion does not understand the Monkey’s discourse…The monkey speaks figuratively, in a symbolic code; the lion interprets or reads literally and suffers the consequences of his folly…” In this way, the Monkey uses the same language as the Lion, but he uses it on a level that the Lion cannot comprehend. This usually leads to the Lion’s “trounc[ing]” at the hands of a third-party, the Elephant. The net effect of all of this is “the reversal of [the Lion’s] status as the King of the Jungle.” In this way, the “master’s house” is dismantled when his own tools are turned against him by the trickster Monkey.

Following in this tradition, critics since Gates have come to assert that another popular African American folk trickster, Brer Rabbit, uses clever language to perform the same kind of rebellious societal deconstruction as the Signifying Monkey. Brer Rabbit is the “creative way that the slave community responded to the oppressor’s failure to address them as human beings created in the image of God.” The figurative representative of this slave community, Brer Rabbit is the hero with a ”fragile body but a deceptively strong mind” that allows him to “create [his] own symbols in defiance of the perverted logic of the oppressor.” By twisting language to create these symbols, Brer Rabbit not only was the “personification of the ethic of self-preservation” for the slave community, but also “an alternative response to their oppressor’s false doctrine of anthropology.” Through his language of trickery, Brer Rabbit outwits his oppressors, deconstructing, in small ways, the hierarchy of subjugation to which his weak body forces him to physically conform.

[youtube:1k80qg69]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHNDKxySTvU[/youtube:1k80qg69]
Last Edit: July 28, 2011, 07:17:29 AM by simalves
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The spider trickster Anansi
May 23, 2010, 03:36:18 PM


Anansi
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Anansi the Trickster is one of the most important characters of West African and Caribbean folklore. He is also known as Ananse, Kwaku Ananse, and Anancy; and in the Southern United States he has evolved into Aunt Nancy. He is a spider, but often acts and appears as a man. The story of Anansi is akin to the Coyote or Raven trickster found in many Native American cultures.

The Anansi tales are believed to have originated in the Ashanti tribe in Ghana. (The word Anansi is Akan and means, simply, spider.) They later spread to other Akan groups and then to the West Indies, Suriname, and the Netherlands Antilles. On Curaçao, Aruba, and Bonaire he is known as Nanzi, and his wife as Shi Maria.

Mythology

Anansi is a culture hero, who acts on behalf of Nyame, his father and the sky god. He brings rain to stop fires and performs other duties for him. His mother is Asase Ya. There are several mentions of Anansi's children, the first son often being named as Ntikuma. According to some stories his wife is known as Miss Anansi or Mistress Anansi but most commonly as Aso. He is depicted as a spider, a human, or combinations thereof.

In some beliefs, Anansi is responsible for creating the sun, the stars and the moon, as well as teaching mankind the techniques of agriculture.

Stories

Anansi tales are some of the best-known in West Africa. The stories made up an exclusively oral tradition, and indeed Anansi himself was synonymous with skill and wisdom in speech. It was as remembered and told tales that they crossed to the Caribbean and other parts of the New World with captives via the Atlantic slave trade.

One of his stories is called "Anansi and The Turtle", the moral to this story is if you try to outsmart somebody that person might outsmart you.

Stories of Anansi became such a prominent and familiar part of Ashanti oral culture that the word Anansesem - "spider tales" -came to embrace all kinds of fables. Peggy Appiah, who collected Anansi tales in Ghana and published many books of his stories wrote: "So well known is he that he has given his name to the whole rich tradition of tales on which so many Ghanaian children are brought up - anansesem - or spider tales."Elsewhere they have other names, for instance Anansi-Tori in Suriname and Kuent'i Nanzi in Curaçao.

Many Anansi stories deal with him attempting to trick people into allowing him to steal food or money, or something else that could turn a profit, but frequently the tricks ultimately backfire on Anansi.

Relationship between Anansi and Br’er Rabbit

One of the times Anansi himself was tricked was when he tried to fight a tar baby after trying to steal food, but became stuck to it instead. It is a tale well known from a version involving Br'er Rabbit, found in the Uncle Remus stories and adapted and used in the 1946 live-action/animated Walt Disney movie Song of the South. These were derived from African-American folktales in the Southern United States, that had part of their origin in African folktales preserved in oral storytelling by African-America. Elements of the African Anansi tale were combined by African-American storytellers with elements from Native American tales, such as the Cherokee story of the "Tar Wolf", which had a similar theme, but often had a trickster rabbit as a protagonist.


 [youtube:14m691su]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4D470YSl2Y&feature=related[/youtube:14m691su]
Last Edit: July 28, 2011, 07:13:33 AM by simalves
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loyalfan

Re: The Spider (Anansi)
May 23, 2010, 03:49:18 PM
THATS STRANGE...I JUST SAT AND A READ A SCHOOL READING BOOK WITH A 6 YEAR OLD ABOUT ANANSI AND THE CROCODILE........................he tricks the crocodile...........well well well whatever will i read of next on here....... :lol:  :lol:  :lol:  :lol:  :lol:  :lol:  :lol:  :lol:  :lol:  :lol:  :lol:  :lol:  :lol:  :lol:  :lol:  :lol:
Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 06:00:00 PM by Guest
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