Tricksters: Trickster in West Africa

For this week's trickster books, I'm focusing on important secondary literature about tricksters. Yesterday's book by Lewis Hyde took a global perspective, whereas today's book zooms in on tricksters of western African cultures: The Trickster in West Africa: A Study of Mythic Irony and Sacred Delight by Robert Doane Pelton.

Robert Doane Pelton (1935-2020) was a Catholic priest who studied at McGill University and then completed a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago Divinity School. In this book based on his 1974 doctoral dissertation, Pelton examines four different West African traditions: Ananse stories from the Ashanti of Ghana, Legba stories from the Fon of Benin, Eshu stories from the Yoruba of Nigeria and Ogo-Yurugu stories from the Dogon of Mali. He also provides an introductory overview of scholarship on trickster traditions, plus his own theory of the trickster as inspired by these African traditions. 

For more about the book, here's a review by Michael Atwood Mason, who served as the Director of the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage.

I'll be back tomorrow with more on tricksters in Africa and in the African Diaspora, and then I'll move on to trickster traditions in Native American cultures. Meanwhile, here's Pelton's book for your reading pleasure, just a click away at the Internet Archive!

 The Trickster in West Africa:
A Study of Mythic Irony and Sacred Delight
by Robert Doane Pelton