Trickster Orthodoxy?: Deceptive Appearances in Louise Erdrich’s The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse

Year 2007, Issue: 26, 51 - 67, 01.10.2007

Michel Feith

Abstract

The ambiguous figure of the trickster calls for forked beginnings: there are at least two ways of envisaging him, as expressed in Paul Radin’s classical definition: In what must be regarded as its earliest and most archaic form, as found among the North American Indians, 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 . . . 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 values come into being. x

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