Tricksters Clowns Naifs

Do subversive characters make subversive stories? In the course of the semester we will encounter human and animal characters, men and women, adults and children who forge identities and trick, lie and cheat their way through the world, thus upsetting the order they encounter. What cultural work do stories about such unruly characters do, be they tricksters, clowns or naïfs? To answer this question we will look into C.G. Jung’s psychoanalytical approach to trickster characters as -archetypical psychic structures” as well as into constructivist approaches that stress that each trickster character needs to be read as specific to the culture that creates him/her. In contrast to -2.1. Unreliable Narration”, this course will only have a short theoretical introduction to then mainly focus on application. The range of texts analyzed during the semester will include Native American trickster tales (e.g., -The Fox , the Wolf and the Well”), Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the British TV show -Misfits”(2009-), the female trickster in screwball comedy (Bringing Up Baby (1938)), the naïf in Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) and the clown in Laurence Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759-76), as well as darker renditions of the clown in Alan Moore’s Batman The Killing Joke (1988) and Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight (2008). Students are strongly advised to take this course together with the other part of the module (2.1. Unreliable Narration). !!!Laut der aktuellen Prüfungsordnung können LKM-Studenten (2011) Ihre Prüfungsleistung nur im Modul 2.2. erbringen!!! Anglistik - Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft Universität Siegen SoSe 2013 M.A. Peters Maria Verena M.A