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Format: Thèse

  • Tricksters, Witches, and Warriors : a Feminist Experiment in Rewriting a Patriarchal Narrative in Children’s Fantasy Literature

    Cette fiche apparait dans la figure du Trickster et de la Sorcière.

    « In this thesis, I identify and analyze mechanisms of patriarchal bias in children’s fantasy literature primarily through the lens of under-represented female tricksters, examining existing literature to reveal ideologies and semiotics that reinforce patriarchal normativity according to limited archetypal representation. Through this study, three insights became clear. First, there are few identified female tricksters in various world mythologies; however, when applying trickster characteristics to mythological archetypes, it becomes evident that there are plenty of female tricksters who are identified by another label: “witch.” I examine the impact this negative stereotype plays on feminine representation of otherwise beloved tricksters, especially within children’s literature. Second, I describe ongoing efforts to unweave patriarchal biases in so-called feminist texts via the trickster archetype, pointing out a common overcorrection through the use of women warriors- women who are stronger and more powerful than men within their patriarchal environments, who create unrealistic expectations for female agency. Third, I point out that by placing women warriors within hegemonic systems, these stories reinforce patriarchal normativity rather than mitigate the suppositions of male superiority, as intended. Therefore, this paper aims to bring new perspective to the negative tropes we employ in our writings for children’s fantasy and suggest the use of more appropriately labeled and embodied female tricksters to help unweave embedded patriarchal biases. I also conduct an experiment to employ my theories by example in the craft application portion of my study-a feminist fantasy novel called Two Lies and a Truth. » (Résumé)

  • Études sur la figure du Trickster dans la littérature américaine

    Considérant que la figure du Trickster est toute désignée pour les travaux en littérature comparée, le « melting pot » américain est riche de rencontres et de mutations culturelles : de la diaspora noire afro-américaine, aux récits autochtones, en passant par la littérature sino-américaine et la littérature blanche. Le Trickster, en tant que figure liminale qui transgresse les frontières et personnifie la résistance à l’hégémonie, permet de développer des réflexions sur les questions d’identité et de résistance en territoire américain.

  • Ideology and re(-)presentation in « Paradise Lost »

    Cette fiche apparait à la fois dans la figure du Diable et du Trickster.

    « Recent critics generally agree that however great aesthetic autonomy it may enjoy, Paradise Lost marks Milton’s ideological reproduction of an epic past. This reproduction registers, in turn, Milton’s dialogic response to the dominant seventeenth-century socio-political, socio-economic, and cultural ethos–the shared conviction of Milton’s age. Putting the text of Paradise Lost within its social context, I would argue that despite the guise of historical pastness and fictive characterization, Milton’s re(-)presentation of the biblical story of Adam and Eve unveils his ideology in terms of epic narratology, familial tradition, the trickster myth, the notion of a dyad God (adopting the body natural and body politic division), and divine justice.

    The very way Milton foregrounds such subject matter as the story of the Fall and free will; the very emphasis on the familial dimension of primogeniture, meritocracy, usufruct, and companionate marriage (as contrasted with patriarchally-arranged union); the ambivalent use of the trickster myth to depict Satan and God; the antagonism against royalty and tyranny; the (un)conscious employment of the reigning political notion of the body natural and the body politic to represent the twinning qualities of his God; the imposition of panoptic schemata (the all-seeing God and the indwelling disciplinary power of the tree) as a coercive way to inflict punishment and discipline–all point to Milton’s religious propensity, social consciousness, and political desire which are inherent in the very act of transcribing social practices into discourse. Paradise Lost, itself a product of much deferral and deliberation, becomes therefore the very site of Milton’s re-presentation of his society, his reaction against the world, and of course the world’s reaction to him. Hence, Milton’s re(-)presentation of the biblical truth–the very text of Paradise Lost–at once contains and deconceals his ideology. » (Résumé)

  • Études sur la figure du Trickster dans les cultures africaines et dans la diaspora noire

    Plusieurs travaux se concentrent sur les figures de Trickster dans les contes et les textes originant sur le territoire africain et leurs mutations dans la diaspora noire sur le territoire américain ou carribéen. Les figures de Trickster, comme la figure de Ananse, soutiennent des récits de résistances coloniales.

  • Études sur la figure du Trickster dans la littérature anglaise

    Plusieurs études se penchent sur la présence des personnages de Trickster dans la littérature anglaise, en particulier dans les écrits de Shakespeare et de Chaucer.

  • The Trickster Archetype: His Function in Contemporary Fiction (Melville, Barth, Ellison, Nabokov, Mishima)

    « The function of the trickster archetype in contemporary fiction has been little studied. Originally a destructive god who tricks his way from chaos and nonidentity to order and self-knowledge, the trickster archetype is a Dionysian shapeshifter and irresponsible deceiver who nevertheless acts creatively as a catalyst for rebirth. Given the author’s unifying vision of history, the trickster cancels out his destructiveness whenever a personal or historical dislocation such as those seen in America and Japan disorients our perception of reality. He throws into doubt our Enlightenment-born reliance upon consciousness which imprisons us in solipsistic isolation.

    Melville’s Confidence-Man: His Masquerade presents a prototype whose metamorphoses deceive his victims in con-games that link men together in common folly while exposing the fallacy of their confidence in “progress.” Ralph Ellison envisions American Negro history as a tricksterhood fated to failure, so that the ubiquitous Rinehart in Invisible Man does not offer a positive humanity to share with the hero and remains an uncancelled Charybdis. On the other hand, John Barth’s tricksters evolve into successful catalysts for dislocation, from disastrous Jake Horner in the End of the Road to the unifying and humanizing Henry Burlingame in The Sot-Weed Factor.

    By exploiting self-parody, Vladimir Nabokov evolves as a trickster-author by cancelling out his trickster-doubles, declaring them illusory, as in The Real Life of Sebastian Knight. Although Hermann of Despair traps himself in Narcissistic mirrors, Humbert in Lolita transcends his by usurping Quilty’s tricksterhood, just as Pale Fire’s Kinbote robs Shade of his trickster-authorship through his Notes.

    If Burlingame is the most successful trickster in this study, Yukio Mishima’s novelist Shunsuke is the most negative. Trapped doubly in solipsism and a rigid spirit-body dialectic, he dehumanizes his living puppet. In The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, however, Mishima locates the dislocation of war-torn Japan inside a deranged acolyte who destroys the Temple, his solipsized double self, in order to unite with it–an aesthetic self-cancellation which humanizes him.

    The trickster archetype thus functions as a humanizing force. If left free, he creates identity out of illusion and liberates mankind from the dead end of his conscious world. » (Résumé)

  • Études sur les Tricksters féminins

    Bien que la figure du Trickster soit, dans la majorité des cas, des figures masculines, certains travaux se penchent sur les incarnations féminines de la figure du Trickster.

  • Études sur la figure du Trickster dans la littérature européenne continentale

    La figure du Trickster est au coeur de plusieurs travaux en littérature comparée de l’Europe continentale, du théâtre français aux légendes scandinaves, en passant par la littérature picaresque et les contes allemands.

  • The trickster archetype from orality to print

    « Orality-literacy theory (as articulated by Parry, Lord, Havelock, Innis, Goody, and Foley, but especially Walter Ong) argues that many features of mental organization, including those in verbal art, are not necessarily innate, but are produced with and by the resources of literacy. Working from this theory, the dissertation traces the trickster figure through several stages in the history of literate consciousness. Chapter One reviews current scholarship on tricksters in literature and rejects Jungian and related schemes of psychic evolution as a basis for comparative study of trickster figures. Chapter Two argues that trickster tales, immensely important in virtually all primary oral cultures, are ways in which these cultures foreground language as a field for collective comment. Many of the trickster’s supposedly “psychological” characteristics arise in response to the needs of the oral performance context. The chapter concludes that, far from being a pure representative of an undifferentiated unconscious as Jung proposed, the trickster represents a truncated consciousness trapped in a closed, solipsistic word of non-referring language. Chapter Three examines Mak in the Secunda Pastorum as a trickster in the tradition of the Christian “comedy of evil,” representing a principle of linguistic disorder opposed to the authoritative communal voice of the Church. Chapter Four discusses the trickster-narrator in the anonymous autobiographical novel Lazarillo de Tormes, the first picaresque novel. Chapter Five presents Sterne’s Tristram Shandy as in many ways the fullest realization of the trickster as author who draws persistent and ironic attention to the conventions of printing, autobiography and written voice in the same way that oral tricksters focus attention on the conventions, taboos and dangers of oral speech. Tristram’s foregrounding of the typographic and rhetorical artifices of language is intimately linked to his ambiguous sexuality, with its suggestion of impotence. This linkage is the existential core of the trickster archetype. » (Résumé)

  • Reclaiming the Rusalka: Towards Multiplicities of Gender in Russian Literary and Visual Culture

    « Despite her kinship with European mermaids, the rusalka is unique to East Slavic folklore, where she appears (even more so than the powerful Baba Yaga) as its most ambivalent and multifaceted female figure. Long an object of fascination haunting the creative imagination of Russian writers, artists, composers and filmmakers, the rusalka is traditionally depicted as the soul or spirit of a beautiful maiden who died an untimely, unnatural death, has become an &ldquounclean; force” and poses a lethal supernatural threat — mostly to men. Traditionally imagined by male artists as a creature with enhanced feminine qualities — a beautiful (often nude) physique; long green or blond hair; and large breasts — the rusalka casts into relief the complex relationship between myth and gender in Russia, from ancient times to the present day. In male discourse, the rusalka’s demonic side typically preponderates; she is reduced to a vengeful magical creature, denied any potential for resistance and agency. But can we define the rusalka’s femininity differently? » (Extrait du résumé)