/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.19161512]

What are some books about guile trickster characters?

[Anonymous No.19161519]

>>19161512
Prose Edda, Poetic Edda

[Anonymous No.19161759]

>>19161512
Das Rheingold libretto.

https://youtu.be/4jO6d4z8r7w?t=4337

[Anonymous No.19161763]

>>19161759
Thank you.

[Anonymous No.19161764]

[Anonymous No.19163125]

>>19161512
If your thread doesn't die anon I'll post a story i liked as a kid it's on my laptop have a booomp for noe

[Anonymous No.19163261]

Loki isn't really a trickster, or all that guilesome. Odin is far more of a trickster and displays far more guile. Loki is just a degenerate and a liar, and not even a crafty one.

Anyways, the Odyssey. There's a lot of parallels between Odin and Odysseus, interestingly.

[Anonymous No.19163281]

>>19163261
>Loki is just a degenerate and a liar,
But that's the archetypal trickster.

>and not even a crafty one.
Humiliating Thor with visions was pretty crafty.

[Anonymous No.19163337]

>>19163281
No, it's not. The Trickster is a very specific classification wherein an individual exploits illegibility and unintelligibility to affect some change in the world by moving between liminal states. Loki doesn't really do that. He's totally legible and he's completely intelligible. He doesn't even really move between liminal states, he just acts badly. He's like a lesser Tezcatlipoca if anything; political power utilizing the low, the fringes, as a tool of order.

[Anonymous No.19163353]

>>19161512
loki is NOT a "trickster"
fuck you and your meme preconceptions

[Anonymous No.19163414]

>>19163337
>The Trickster is a very specific classification wherein an individual exploits illegibility and unintelligibility to affect some change in the world by moving between liminal states.
Mind explaining what you mean by 'moving between liminal states'? I don't see how Loki doesn't exploit illegibility and unintelligibility.

>He's like a lesser Tezcatlipoca if anything; political power utilizing the low, the fringes, as a tool of order.
Since when did Loki do any trick as a tool of order? He literally just humiliated Thor because he could.

[Anonymous No.19163434]

>>19161512
Rumplestiltskin

[Anonymous No.19163509]

>>19163414
Loki is Odin's blood brother. Why? Because it helps Odin achieve his whole "Wotanic Mission". Odin is allowed to do whatever he has to, from murder to adultery to theft to lying to genocide, in order to prevent the Jotunn from destroying reality. The Jotunn are hungry, they're never full. They will breed without end if left unchecked. He fathers Thor so he can have someone to go around and keep their population in check. Every single action Odin takes is ultimately in furtherance of this goal of defending order (and he only succeeds at Ragnarok, after an eternity of labor, by a cunt's hair). Loki (and Hoenir) is Odin's blood brother for that very purpose: because he furthers Odin's goals.

Loki isn't a trickster because he doesn't move between liminal states. Odysseus, for comparison, does. Odysseus moves between stranger and hero constantly, in fact every adventure begins as such: he enters as a stranger, leaves as a hero. But who he leaves as is constantly changing (he leaves Polyphemus as "Nobody", after all). He literally gets on a boat, one of the most liminal states that man can achieve. He does this several times. Odin, similarly, is constantly moving between the Nine Worlds by crawling (flying?) along the World Tree. The Trickster moves through places that aren't places to get to places that are places. Loki never does that.

Likewise, Loki never really reinvents his identity as Odin (and Odysseus) are constantly doing. There's zero subtlety or question to his character, he's just an immoral sexual degenerate. In a sense, he's a tool Odin keeps around because he's willing to do stuff like "turn into a mare and get impregnated by a stallion and then give birth to the weird mutant God-Horse". In Odin's arsenal of God-Weapons, he has Thor who can go around smashing stuff, Freyr who is a font of endless virility, Freyja is his witch-wife, and Loki is his degenerate. There's zero guile to it, and that's exactly why Odin keeps him around: he's predictable. Even in Lokasenna, when Loki has a temper tantrum, kills Aegir's butler, and then returns, he doesn't come up with some kind of story or disguise or clever ruse, he just... walks back in and pretends that nothing happened.

[Anonymous No.19163534]

>>19161512

[Anonymous No.19163564]

>>19163509
>Nobody
Just to clarify, this in particular is a good demonstration of Odysseus as a Trickster, as he, the man obsessed with fame, renown, being known, kleos, manages to engage in word-magic to turn "Nobody" into an identifier of him and only him AND a tool of increasing his own kleos AND doing so for all time. This is Odysseus playing with liminality, legibility, and intelligibility.

[Anonymous No.19163693]

>>19163509
>Loki is Odin's blood brother.
Um, where is this stated? I've never heard this. I've also never heard of Wotan doing everything in his stories to stop the total destruction at Ragnarock, yes he does some things, but not everything. As far as I know he didn't father Thor for a prior intention.

I think either you're just being autistic over the definition of 'trickster', ignoring what the 'archetypal trickster' brings to mind for most people, or you just don't know enough about Norse myths.

>Likewise, Loki never really reinvents his identity as Odin (and Odysseus) are constantly doing. There's zero subtlety or question to his character, he's just an immoral sexual degenerate.
Like all of the Norse deities, it's impossible to get a realistic personality out of him. He is always seen as going back and forth between helper of the Gods and enemy of the Gods, but not always a purely malicious enemy. Sometimes a mere light hearted enemy. Sometimes he's a fish, sometimes a horse which contrary to intention gets shamefully raped (so he's hardly 'a sexual degenerate', but that becomes part of his overall dishonourableness). You don't know what Loki's thinking.

>There's zero guile to it, and that's exactly why Odin keeps him around: he's predictable.
So why exactly would Odin eventually banish him?

[Anonymous No.19163700]

Lazarillo de Tormes

[Anonymous No.19163710]

>>19163534
I'll second this. Perhaps the best thing about Peter as a trickster character is how he doesn't decieve though lies, but by allowing Robert to draw his own false conclusions.

[Anonymous No.19165065]

>>19161764
At least he knew how to make popcorn

[Anonymous No.19165106]

John Fowles' The Magus is a very good read

[Anonymous No.19165302]

>>19161512
Filth by Irvine Welsh
Main character was an asshole who tricked everyone around him, very funny read

[Anonymous No.19165325]

>>19161512
Not very /lit/, but Prince of Fools (Red Queen's War trilogy) is pretty good.

[Anonymous No.19165359]

>>19163693
>Um, where is this stated?
Lokasenna, but the ceremony is described elsewhere. Snorri also brings it up. They cut their palms, shook hands (such that the blood mixed), and I believe they then took a drink from a horn under some kind of arch (or maybe it's a branch of a tree?). You might be confused because, in the Marvel comics, Loki is Odin's adopted son and thus brothers with Thor, whereas in Norse religion that is absolutely not the case (although Thor and Loki are sort of friends).

If you want some literature on how Tricksters work, check out The Unknown Odysseus. A big portion of it is covering Odysseus as a Greek Trickster and going over just what the Trickster actually is.

[Anonymous No.19166397]

>>19165302
I find really sad the reveal at the end of the story. Most of his co-workers gave him a pass because they knew how sad and pathetic he was. In the case of his chief, he a freemason like him and that also gave him a free pass.

[Anonymous No.19166423]

my diary desu

[Anonymous No.19167103]

>>19163693
The quality of your discourse is extremely poor

[Anonymous No.19168308]

>>19161512
all narratives significantly featuring the god Enki/Ea

[Anonymous No.19168762]

I'd say Den Vos Reynaerde/Reynard the Fox

[Anonymous No.19168925]

>>19161512
Schelmuffsky

[Anonymous No.19169083]

[Anonymous No.19170561]

>>19163337
>>19163509
Loki shapeshifts all the time. How is that not "moving between liminal states"? He also literally moves between all the realms more so than any other god. Even so, this is a very narrow definition of "trickster" that springs from that famous "Trickster: Shaman of the Liminal" Essay, which is a good essay but not an all encompassing descriptor.

[Anonymous No.19170621]

>>19163693
>doesn't know about blood brother
>ragnarock
>3 sentences in
I don't know what I was expecting. Anon, defer to the other Anon who clearly is much better informed than you.

[Anonymous No.19170723]

>>19163700
basado

[Anonymous No.19170780]

>>19161512
Flashman