• Title/Summary/Keyword: Trickster

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A study on a Trickster in Talchum - Focusing on Maltugi in Yangbangwajang of Bongsantalchum (탈춤에 나타난 트릭스터 연구 - 봉산탈춤 "양반과장" 속 말뚝이를 중심으로)

  • Park, Hee-Jeong
    • The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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    • v.16 no.5
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    • pp.282-289
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    • 2016
  • A term that has been used since ancient times, 'trickster' means 'a person who performs general tricks'. In other words, a trickster is a person who exhibits his or her intrinsic characteristics by using tricks, or who has a special ability to make any situation work well only for him or herself. This thesis looks for basic concepts and features of tricksters in research undertaken into tricksters to date. It also aims to uncover the trickster side of Maltugi in Talchum (a traditional mask dance). A trickster is a person who tricks, but the characteristic itself is unclear and abnormal. A trickster also has borderline, duplicitous or multi-value characteristics, so it is impossible to merely define him or her as 'a person who tricks'. When dealing with a trickster's characteristics, the 'Liminality' element is very important, because he or she is a person who exists in all the borderlines of space, time, society, and language, and assaults the social order via deceit, play, and the fulfillment of greed. Maltugi in Talchum is a man of humble birth, but he is a character who attacks the Yangban (aristocrats) without hesitation. He is a kind of representative of the people who speaks for the commoners' feelings. At a time of the Three Policies' Disorder and frequent external aggressions, the commoners felt a sense of helplessness against the Yangban, who they viewed as immoral. Maltugi laughs at and depreciates the Yangban through the use of puns, and shows a faithful attitude to the present without being afraid of the result caused by his activity. This implies that he has the characteristics of a trickster.

The Clever Hare in Torobo Folklore

  • Ashdown, Shelley
    • Cross-Cultural Studies
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    • v.28
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    • pp.87-114
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    • 2012
  • The Maa speaking Torobo people inhabiting the southern portion of the Mau Escarpment in Kenya approach both individual and community survival from a relational orientation focused on ethnic identity and responsibility. This social responsibility to the tribe is in stark contrast to Torobo relationships with other ethnic groups. The purpose of the research is twofold. First, the paper explores how folkloric language through a trickster image reflects important cultural and social ideals, understandings, and patterns of thought in Torobo world view. A second purpose is to offer ethnographic information to scholars and students' alike necessary for world view studies of eastern Africa specifically focused on the interplay between anthropomorphic tales and the social context in which these stories are utilized. The key research question for this analysis asks how the trickster image in Torobo folklore conceptualize the life experience. A Torobo folktale entitled, The Clever Hare, is the text chosen for analysis with the hare character as the protagonist. A second query explores the importance of the trickster image in understanding Torobo world view categories of Self and Other. The analysis contributes an ethnographic perspective for the world view categories of Self and Other as well as trickster folklore by examining the nature of Torobo-ness using the tale of the cunning hare as a research tool.

An Interpretation of the Folktale 'the Servant Who Ruined the Master's House' from the Perspective of Analytical Psychology: Centering on the Trickster Archetype (민담 '주인집을 망하게 한 하인'의 분석심리학적 이해: 트릭스터 원형을 중심으로)

  • Myoungsun Roh
    • Sim-seong Yeon-gu
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    • v.37 no.2
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    • pp.184-254
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    • 2022
  • Through this thesis, the psychological meaning of the Korean folktale 'the servant who ruined the master's house' was examined. The opposition between the master and the servant is a universal matter of the human psychology. It can be seen as a conflict between the hardened existing collective consciousness and the new consciousness to compensate for and renew it. From different angles, it has become the opposition between man's spiritual and instinctive aspects, between the conscious and the unconscious, or between the ego and the shadow. In the folktale, the master tries several times to get rid of the youngest servant, but the servant uses tricks and wits to steal food, a horse, the youngest sister, and all money from the master, and finally, take his life. It ends with the marriage of the youngest sister and the servant. Enantiodromia, in which the master dies, and the servant becomes the new master, can be seen that the old collective consciousness is destroyed, and the new consciousness that has risen from the collective unconscious takes the dominant position. In an individual's psychological situation, it can be seen that the existing attitude of the ego is dissolved and transformed into a new attitude. In the middle of the story, the servant marries the youngest sister by exploiting naive people to rewrite the back letter written by the master to kill him. This aspect can be understood negatively in the moral concept of collective consciousness, but it can also be seen as a process of integrating mental elements that have been ignored in the collective consciousness of the Joseon Dynasty, symbolized by a woman, a honey seller, and a hungry Buddhist monk. The new consciousness, represented by the servant, has the characteristics of a trickster that is not bound by the existing frame, so it can encompass the psychological elements that have been ignored in the collective consciousness. Such element may represent compensation or an alternative to the collective consciousness in the late Joseon Dynasty. The master puts the servant in a leather bag and hangs it on a tree to kill the servant. However, the servant deceives a blind man; he opened his eyes while hanged. Instead of the servant, the blind man dies, and the servant is freed. As the problem of the conflict between master and servant is finally entrusted to the whole spirit (Self) symbolized by a tree, the blind man gets removed. It can be understood as an intention of the Self to distinguish and purify the elements of recklessness, stupidity, and greed included in the trickster. Through these processes, the servant, which symbolizes a new change in collective consciousness or a new attitude of ego, solves the existing problems and takes the place of the master. While listening to the cunning servant's performance, the audience feels a sense of joy and liberation. At the same time, in the part where the blind man and the master's family die instead and the servant becomes the master, they experience feelings of fear and concern about the danger and uncontrollability of the servant. The tricksters appearing in foreign analogies are also thoroughly selfish and make innocent beings deceive or die in order to satisfy their desires and escape from danger. Efforts to punish or reform these tricksters are futile and they run away. Therefore, this folktale can also be seen as having a purpose and meaning to let us know that this archetypal shadow is very dangerous and that consciousness cannot control or assimilate it, but only awe and contemplate it. Trickster is an irrational manifestation of revivifying natural energy that rises from the unconscious as a compensation for hardened existing structure and order. The phenomenon may be destructive and immoral from the standpoint of the existing collective mind, but it should be seen as a function of the collective unconscious, a more fundamental psychic function that cannot be morally defined. The servant, a figure of the trickster archetype, is a being that brings transformation and has the duality and contradiction of destructiveness and creativity. The endings of this folktale's analogies are diverse, reflecting the diversified response of the audience's mind due to the ambivalence of the trickster, and also suggesting various responses toward the problem of the trickster from the unconscious. It also shows that the trickster is a problem of inconclusive and controversial contradictions that cannot be controlled with a conscious rational attitude, and that we can only seriously contemplate the trickster archetype within us.