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noting that Puck predates "Midsummer Night's Dream"
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* [[Pedro Urdemales]] – a trickster folk hero from Iberian and Latin American folklore |
* [[Pedro Urdemales]] – a trickster folk hero from Iberian and Latin American folklore |
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* [[Prometheus]] - Tricks Zeus over sacrifices at [[Trick at Mecone|Mecone]], steals fire on behalf of mankind. |
* [[Prometheus]] - Tricks Zeus over sacrifices at [[Trick at Mecone|Mecone]], steals fire on behalf of mankind. |
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* [[Puck ( |
* [[Puck (folklore)|Puck]]/[[Robin Goodfellow]] - A "merry domestic fairy" from British Folklore. Prominently featured in [[Shakespeare]]'s ''[[A Midsummer Night's Dream]]'', where he plays tricks on a group of humans who stumble into a forest. His final monologue explains the nature of tricksters. |
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* [[Puss in Boots]] - A clever and magical cat who tricks a king into raising a lowborn miller to the station of a great noble, and defeats a shapeshifting ogre by tricking him into becoming a mouse. |
* [[Puss in Boots]] - A clever and magical cat who tricks a king into raising a lowborn miller to the station of a great noble, and defeats a shapeshifting ogre by tricking him into becoming a mouse. |
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* [[Raven Tales|Raven]] amongst the [[Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast]]. |
* [[Raven Tales|Raven]] amongst the [[Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast]]. |
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The trickster is a common stock characterinfolklore and popular culture. A clever, mischievous person or creature, the trickster achieves goals through the use of trickery. A trickster may trick others simply for amusement or for survival in a dangerous world. The trickster could be a personification of the chaos that the world needs to function.
Anarchetypical example is the simple peasant successfully put to the test by a King who wishes a suitable suitor for his daughter. In this fairy tale, no brave and valiant prince or knight succeeds. Aided only by his natural wit, the peasant evades danger and triumphs over monsters and villains without fighting. Thus the most unlikely candidate passes the trials and receives the prize. Such characters are a staple of animated cartoons, in particular those used and developed by Tex Avery et al. during the Golden Age of American animation.
Hynes and Doty, in Mythical Trickster Figures (1997) state that every trickster has several of the following six traits:[1]
Yet the Doctor has seldom been a straightforward hero. He has often exhibited characteristics of the trickster, for he generally relies on wiliness and rhetorical skill more than martial prowess or physical force, and his character has been frequently tinged with antiheroism
The Doctor needs his own trickster figure to transport him to his own greenworld which, perforce, must be that much more chaotic and magical and insane and governed by all the primal forces even he tries to ignore. And there he can confront those conflicts within himself and find resolution to them before returning, fixed, to his real world. And order was restored with a wedding!