English 134NA
Notes for Class 18

This page contains materials intended only to facilitate class discussion (excerpts from online reading materials, outlines of issues, links to resources that may be mentioned in class, etc.). The materials are not the same as the instructor's notes for the class and are thus not designed to represent the full exposition or logic of the class.
Gerald Vizenor, "Trickster Discourse: Comic Holotropes and Language Games"

"The tribal trickster is a liberator and healer in a narrative, a comic sign, communal signification and a discourse with imagination" (187)

"the trickster straddles oppositions" (188)

"The trickster sign wanders between narrative voices and comic chance in oral presentations" (189)

"Tropes are figures of speech; here the trickster is a sign that becomes a comic holotrope, a consonance of sentences in various voices, ironies, variations in cultural myths and social metaphors" (190)

"The trickster is a comic discourse, a collection of 'utterances' in oral traditions; the opposite of a comic discourse is a monolgue, an utterance in isolation, which comes closer to the tragic mode in literature and not a comic tribal world view" (191)

"The interlocutors in the trickster narratives are the author, narrator, characters and audience" (191)

"The trickster is a chance, a comic holotrope in a postmodern language game that uncovers the distinctions and ironies between narrative voices" (192)

there "is a real connection between trickster narratives, dubious theologies and hagiographies" (203)