Notes on the trickster as a literary character in archnarratives. A brief initial analysis

Abstract

The so-called “trickster” is a special and important archfigure in the mythological and fairy- tale images of each civilization and cultural circle. The trickster is a controversial and often (seemingly) contradictory character that belongs to the “culture of popular laughter” (Bakhtin) or picaresque mythology (Kerényi). The aim of this paper is to present a brief initial analysis of the selected characters on a trans-genre and trans-cultural sample of ancient texts.