The trickster makes the tale : games in postmodern fiction.

Abstract

This paper argues that postmodern fiction is not merely rebelling against realist fiction; it mimics the first myths and folktales engendered by humanity. The novels At Swim Two Birds, Pale Fire, and If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller show that games are apparent in self-reflexive fiction. Some examples include the generation of worlds, deliberate mistranslation, and intertexuality. These elements of play are examined and show that while playfulness is present in the mechanisms of storytelling, it is a gross simplification of this spirit as there is a physical embodiment of it in the text – the trickster. This paper shows that it is the trickster is key to story telling, as it does not reify the shape of a story, but rather, consistently expand it.