Trickster and Hero: Two Characters in the Oral and Written Traditions of the World

Notes

1. J. R. R. Tolkien, “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,” The Beowulf Poet, A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Donald K. Fry (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, ), . 2. Tolkien argues, however, that “Beowulf is not an ‘epic,’ not even a magnified ‘lay’” (). 3. E. E. Evans-Pritchard, The Zande Trickster (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ). 4. Evans-Pritchard, The Zande Trickster. 5. Prospero: Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits, and Are melted into air, into thin air: And like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capp’d tow’rs, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on; and our little life Is rounded with a sleep. (The Tempest, Act , scene , –) 6. The performance was by a Hlubi woman, about fifty years old, in a home in Nyaniso Location, Matatiele District, the Transkei. The date was November , , and the time, about  am. The audience consisted of fifteen women and five children. Number  in Harold Scheub’s collection. The first part of this story appeared in Harold Scheub, The Xhosa Ntsomi (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ), –. 7. The performance took place on November , , at about  pm, in a home in Nyaniso Location, Matatiele District, the Transkei. The storyteller was a Hlubi woman, about forty years old. Thirty women, three men, and twenty children made up the audience . The performer evoked her somewhat bawdy narrative with a studied nonchalance, a straight face, and a businesslike delivery—and her demeanor was half the fun. The feces is included in the story as just another character, treated as such by the performer, and Trickster Hlakanyana’s increasing frustration is developed by means of nonverbal actions Notes  alone. Effective vocal dramatics and gesturing, and excellent relations with the audience mark this performance. Number  in Harold Scheub’s collection. 8. J. Tom Brown, Among the Bantu Nomads (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, ), –. A “fold” is a fenced enclosure. 9. R. S. Rattray, ed., Akan-Ashanti Folk-Tales (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ), –. 10. Sigismund Wilhelm Koelle, Outlines of a Grammar of the Vei Language (London: Church Missionary House, ), –. 11. Lit., a lie-sickness. 12. John Ciardi and Miller Williams, How Does a Poem Mean? (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, ), . Ciardi wrote, “The concern is not to arrive at a definition and to close the book, but to arrive at an experience” (). And in response to W. B. Yeats’s poetic query, “How can we know the dancer from the dance?” (“Among School Children,” W. B. Yeats, The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats [New York: Macmillan, ]), Ciardi said, “What the poem is, is inseparable from its own performance of itself. The dance is in the dancer and the dancer is in the dance.” He argued, “Above all else, poetry is a performance” (). 13. Dorothea Bleek, ed., “The Mantis and the Korotwiten” in The Mantis and His Friends, collected by W. H. I. Bleek and Lucy C. Lloyd (Cape Town: T. M. Miller; London and Oxford: B. Blackwell []), –. 14. The storyteller comments, “One man anoints another, putting his hands under his armpits into the perspiration. And the other gets it onto his face, where the first man anoints him, that he may become like the first man” (). 15. Bleek, “The Mantis and the Cat,” in The Mantis and His Friends, –. 16. Bleek, “The Mantis and Kutegaua,” in The Mantis and His Friends, –. 17. Bleek, “The Mantis Takes Away the Ticks’ Sheep” and “The Mantis and the Alldevourer ” in The Mantis and His Friends, –. 18. Garvey Nkonki, “The Traditional Prose Literature of the Ngqika,” M.A. [African Studies], University of South Africa, n.d., –. 19. Notes by Dorothea Bleek, in the introduction to The Mantis and His Friends. 20. Bleek, “The Mantis Makes an Eland,” in The Mantis and His Friends, –. 21. See Nongenile Masithathu Zenani, “Sikhuluma,” in African Folklore, ed. Richard M. Dorson (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, ), –. 22. Melville J. Herskovits and Frances S. Herskovits, Dahomean Narrative (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, ), . 23. Herskovits and Herskovits, “How Legba Became Guardian of Men and Gods: Why the Dog Is Respected,” in Dahomean Narrative, –. 24. Legba is spokesman for the gods; his role corresponds to the Fon political official known as “linguist.” 25. Paul Radin, The Trickster: A Study in American Indian Mythology (New York: Bell, ), –. 26. R. Becker, “Conte d...