The trickster

Hardback, xi + 211 pp. including notes following some Radin sections. This is the original (1956) edition of a book that was republished in 1972 with a new introduction by Stanley Diamond (see #032452). Contents: 1. The trickster myth of the Winnebago Indians 2. Supplementary trickster myths 3. The nature and meaning of the myth / Paul Radin 4. The trickster myth in relation to Greek mythology / Karl Kerenyi, translated by R.F.C. Hull 5. On the psychology of the trickster figure / C.G. Jung, translated by R.F.C. Hull Few myths have so wide a distribution as the one, known by the name of the Trickster, which we are presenting here. For few can we so confidently assert that they belong to the oldest expressions of mankind. Few other myths have persisted with their fundamental content unchanged. The Trickster myth is found in clearly recognizable form among the simplest aboriginal tribes and among the complex. We encounter it among the ancient Greeks, the Chinese, the Japanese and in the Semitic world. Many of the Trickster's traits were perpetuated in the figure of the mediaeval jester, and have survived right up to the present day in the Punch-and-Judy plays and in the clown. Although repeatedly combined with other myths and frequently drastically reorganized and reinterpreted, its basic plot seems always to have succeeded in reasserting itself. ... The following paper is the presentation of one such Trickster myth, that found among the Siouan-speaking Winnebago of central Wisconsin and eastern Nebraska. -- Radin, Prefatory note (p. xi).