Marvels & Tales: Special Issue on the Trickster
Deadline: January 31st, 2017
Subversive, deceptive, wily, and comical, the trickster spans national traditions, genres, and historical periods. Often represented as a deity, animal, or human, between upper and lower worlds, the trickster functions as the creator and destroyer of worlds, embodies the sacred and the profane, and brings together the scatological and the spiritual. In other tales, the trickster is a lowly and seemingly unpromising hero or a fool whose antics disrupt the social order only temporarily. A complex figure, the trickster has been deployed in the cause of decolonial and postcolonial resistance in Native American, African, Caribbean, Oceanic, and African American lore, among others. Although the trickster is often imagined to be male, female trickster figures (Sheherazade, the wife of Djuha, Coyote Girl) often challenge the gender norms of their societies.
This issue of Marvels & Tales seeks to explore the various dimensions of the trickster from a wide selection of national traditions, historical periods, and genres, as well as to encourage multidisciplinary approaches to fairy tales and conversations about traditional narrative genres across disciplines. We invite papers of 5,000-7,500 words, relevant translations, and new texts.
Please email your submission as a Word doc to editors Cristina Bacchilega at cbacchi@hawaii.edu and Anne Duggan at a.duggan@wayne.edu.
Deadline: January 31st, 2017
Issue: 32.1 Spring 2018