Mythical Trickster Figures: Contours, Contexts, and Criticisms

Acknowledgments and Permissions

ACI(NOWLEDGMENTS AND PERMISSIONS This collection of essays benefitted directly from the work of an international research consultation, the Trickster Myth Group within the American Academy of Religion. Working together for a period extending over five years, more than forty scholars shared insights and honed their individual analyses of various tricksters. In an age all too often characterized by disciplinary isolation and occasional ideological rigidity, such a critical team effort and synergistic process resulted in a cohesive approach, served to sharpen the ways in which we defined the trickster phenomenon, and highlighted areas where it still escapes definition. Many of the best essays from this collaboration are revised here: Hynes (chapter 2), Doty (chapter 4), Vecsey (chapter 6), Pelton (chapter 7), Ellwood (chapter 8), Ricketts (chapter 10), and Hynes (chapter 13). These essays have been supplemented by other important critical essays a!1d an inclusive bibliography. Works included here from. previous appearances in journals are by arrangement; we are grateful for permission to include them. At the early stages of the editorial work, both Mary Douglas and the nowdeceased Victor Turner were encouraging to us and helpfully critical. Hynes would like to acknowledge the personal support of Margie Shurgot and the fina;ncial support of the National Endowment for the Humanities , Doty the personal support of Joan T. Mallonee, the financial x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS support of the Research Overhead Fund, and material support from the College of Arts and Sciences of the University of Alabama. So many other people helped make this work possible that we will not attempt formally to acknowledge them here. Instead we acknowledge in their help the presence of the trickster who constantly battles to break down our resistance to chaos, disorder, insight, and new knowledge. The Mudhead clown used as a design at the beginning of each section of this book is from a photograph of a storyteller figure by Dorothy and Paul Gutierrez, Santa Clara Pueblo, from the collection of William Doty. The basis for the cover design by Paula Dennis is a photograph of David Aguirre's "Trickster" (32 inches high; 1990), initially shown at the Brigitte Schluger Gallery, Denver, and a gift from Hynes to Doty. We gratefully recognize the following for granting permission to reprint or to print works in this volume: Presses Universitaires de France, for Laura Makarius' chapter, translated here. Journal of Religion in Africa 12/3 (1981) 161-77, Christopher Vecsey's chapter here. For Beidelman's chapter here, reproduced by permission of the American Anthropological Association from American Ethnologist 7: 1, February 1980. Not for further reproduction. Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal, for Anne Doueihi, "Trickster: On Inhabiting the Space Between Discourse and Story," 63/3 (1984): 283311 , an abbreviated version of which is included here as Chapter 12. The University of California press, for approximately thirty-five pages, abridged and revised here, from The Trickster in West Africa by Robert D. Pelton, copyright © 1980 by University of California Press. MYTHICAL ill~l[~ilIEm FIG-~R..ES ...