Book

Monsters, tricksters, and sacred cows : animal tales and American identities / edited by A. James Arnold ; with an afterword by Derek Walcott.

Charlottesville : University Press of Virginia, 1996.

vi, 291 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

The 1992 Quincentennial of the encounter between the New World and the Old resulted in a veritable culture war - an extreme polarization of hardened ideological positions on different ideas of America. Monsters, Tricksters, and Sacred Cows brings a fresh perspective to the confusing question of American identity. It clears the minefields laid by the generals commanding the opposing camps, while demonstrating that both sides have been primarily interested in protecting and defending an idea of "Americanness" that cannot resist scrutiny. Some of the leading international scholars in anthropology, comparative literature, and history of the Americas show convincingly in this book that contacts between and among peoples and ethnic groups have, since early colonial times, produced new - and typically American - cultural forms throughout the hemisphere. Monsters, Tricksters, and Sacred Cows will appeal to the general reader and will attract a wide readership in folklore and cultural anthropology as well as in Caribbean and Latin American studies, comparative literature, and history.

New World studies

New World studies.

Indians -- Folklore.

Animals -- America -- Folklore.

Human-animal relationships -- America -- Folklore.

Human-animal relationships -- America -- Folklore.

Arnold, A. James (Albert James), 1939-

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Enemies of God : monsters and the theology of conquest / Michael Palencia-Roth -- Who is the mightiest of them all? Jaguar and conquistador in Piaroa images of alterity and identity / Joanna Overing -- Animal souls, co-essences, and human destiny in Mesoamerica / Gary H. Gossen -- Coyote, the thinking (wo)man's trickster / Dell H. Hymes -- Lushootseed animal people : mediation and transformation from myth to history / Jay Miller and Vi Hilbert.

Breaking the spell : accounts of encantados by descendants of runaway slaves / Candace Slater -- Animal images in Caribbean Hindu mythology / Brinsley Samaroo -- From ancestral to Creole : humans and animals in a West Indian scale of values / Jeremy Poynting -- Trickster as triptych / Kandioura Dramé -- Animal tales, historic dispossession, and Creole identity in the French West Indies / A. James Arnold -- Animals, elemental tales, and the theater / Derek Walcott.

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398 Monsters