The trickster and the hero, found in so many of the world�� oral traditions, are seemingly opposed but often united in one character. Trickster and Hero provides a comparative look at a rich
array of world oral traditions, folktales, mythologies, and literatures��rom The Odyssey, The Epic of Gilgamesh, and Beowulf to Native American and African tales.
Award-winning folklorist Harold Scheub explores the ��rickster moment,��the moment in the story when the tale, the teller, and the listener are transformed: we are both man and woman, god and
human, hero and villain.
�� �Scheub delves into the importance of trickster mythologies and the shifting relationships between tricksters and heroes. He examines protagonists that figure centrally in a wide range of
oral narrative traditions, showing that the true hero is always to some extent a trickster as well. The trickster and hero, Scheub contends, are at the core of storytelling, and all the
possibilities of life are there: we are taken apart and rebuilt, dismembered and reborn, defeated and renewed.
