THE TRICKSTER | A STUDY IN AMERICAN INDIAN MYTHOLOGY WITH COMMENTARIES BY C. G. JUNG AND KARL KERENYI

Radin, Paul

Published by Bell Publishing, US, 1956

About this Item

Book Condition: Very Good but with no DJ. Slight tropical speckling to Page Edges, otherwise, clean, clear text in tightly bound volume. No internal inscriptions, markings or stains. Anthropological and psychological analysis by Radin Kereny and Jung of the voraciously uninhibited episodes of the Winnebego Trickster cycle. Paul Radin is an authority in American Indian mythology, today rather referred to as Native American. But an authority from the first half of the 20th century. In this particular book he analyzes the Trickster myth in parallel with the Hare myth, both from the Winnebago Indians. He refers to other versions from other tribal traditions but he centers on this particular Winnebago heritage. Paul Radin wrote an initial trickster treatise in 1955 after studying particular Winnebago myths. The Winnebago Trickster cycle of forty-nine stories is central in his book, The Trickster and is the most referenced trickster figure of his writings by subsequent students of Native American tricksters. According to Radin the translation of the tricky one in a Siouan language of the Winnebago is wakdjunkaga; accordingly this specific trickster cycle is also known as the Wakdjunkaga Trickster cycle. Among the forty nine stories are the story of Wakdjunkaga taking his extremely large and weighty penis from the box off his back where he carries it to send it across the river to impregnate a chief's daughter and the story of the talking laxative bulb consumed by the trickster resulting in effluent scatological comedies. Radin also notes the translation of trickster in Ponca, ishtinike, and in Osage, itsike and in the Dakota-Soiux it is ikto-mi, the spider (132). He also relates and comments on other myths including a Winnebago Hare cycle and its cognates, noting an evolution from trickster to culture hero in the trickster figure among the Ojibwa and Menominee (131). Manabozho or Nanaboozoo (also known as Winabojo or Nanabush) is an example of this more controlled, benevolent culture hero among the Chippewa of the Algonquian tribes. In his book Radin preliminarily defines the North American Indian Trickster as follows: "Trickster is at one and the same time creator and destroyer, giver and negator, he who dupes others and who is always duped himself. He wills nothing consciously. At all times he is constrained to behave as he does from impulses over which he has no control. He knows neither good nor evil yet he is responsible for both. He possesses no values, moral or social, is at the mercy of his passions and appetites, yet through his actions all values come into being (xxiii). He concludes his study with: "The overwhelming majority of all so-called trickster myths in North America give an account of the creation of the earth, or at least the transforming of the world, and have a hero who is always wandering, who is always hungry, who is not guided by normal conceptions of good or evil, who is either playing tricks on people of having them played on him and who is highly sexed. Almost everywhere he has some divine traits. These vary from tribe to tribe. In some instances he is regarded as an actual deity, in others as intimately connected with deities, in still others he is at best a generalized animal or human being subject to death (155). This book is a good first step into American Indian mythology but a lot can be added today on the subject that Paul Radin and the people of his generation did not really take into account.

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: THE TRICKSTER | A STUDY IN AMERICAN INDIAN MYTHOLOGY WITH COMMENTARIES BY C. G. JUNG AND KARL KERENYI
• Publisher: Bell Publishing, US
• Publication Date: 1956
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition.
• Condition: Very Good
• Weight: 1 pound