Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth, and Art - Softcover

Hyde, Lewis

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0865475369 ISBN 13: 9780865475366

Publisher: North Point Pr, 1999

Synopsis

Trickster Makes This World solidifies Lewis Hyde's reputation as, in Robert Bly's words, "the most subtle, thorough, and brilliant mythologist we now have." In it, Hyde now brings to life the playful and disruptive side of human imagination as it is embodied in trickster mythology. He first revisits the old stories--Hermes in Greece, Eshu in West Africa, Krishna in India, Coyote in North America, among others--and then holds them up against the life and work of more recent creators: Picasso, Duchamp, Ginsberg, John Cage, and Frederick Douglass. Authoritative in its scholarship, loose-limbed in its style, Trickster Makes This World ranks among the great works of modern cultural criticism.

About this title

Review:

'Hyde is persuasive and is at his most interesting on contemporary tricksters.'

From the Author:

Description of the TRICKSTER book.
Here is the description of my TRICKSTER book, as it appears in the publisher's catalog. Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth, and Art An enchanting investigation into the significance of trickster figures, old and new. Lewis Hyde's ambitious and captivating TRICKSTER MAKES THIS WORLD brings to life the playful and disruptive side of human imagination as it is embodied in the trickster mythology. Most at home on the road or at the twilight edge of town, tricksters are the consummate boundary-crossers, slipping through keyholes, breaching walls, subverting defense systems. Always out to satisfy their inordinate appetites, lying, cheating, and stealing, tricksters are a great bother to have around, but paradoxically they are also indispensable culture heroes. In North America, Coyote taught the race how to dress, sing and shoot arrows. In West Africa, Eshu discovered the art of divination so that suffering humans might know the purposes of heaven. In Greece, Hermes the Thief invented the art of sacrifice, the trick of making fire, and even language itself. Hyde revisits these old stories then holds them up against the life and work of more recent creators: Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, John Cage, Allen Ginsberg, Maxine Hong Kingston, Frederick Douglass and others. The old myths say that the trickster made the world as it actually is. Other gods set out to create a world more perfect and ideal, but THIS world with its complexity and ambiguity, its beauty and its dirt, was trickster's creation, and the work is not yet finished. -- Lewis Hyde / Kenyon College

About this edition

• Publisher: North Point Pr
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0865475369
• ISBN 13: 9780865475366
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 432