Teaching Portfolio
Audrey Watters
COLT 204 – World of Fiction
Clowns and Tricksters
Winter 2005
This course will survey the histories and functions of various trickster and clown figures in mythology, folktales, literature, and popular culture. Beginning with tricksters in Native American, African, and Greek mythology and moving through the Medieval European clowns of both the court and the countryside, this course will examine the roles of tricksters and clowns as characters that challenge reason, invoke chaos, and mark and transgress social conventions. Figures of tricksters and clowns remain important in many contemporary writings, oftentimes appearing as marginalized characters standing outside the mainstream, criticizing the status quo, hastening social transformation, and turning the world upside down.
Required Course Materials
Edward Abbey. The Monkey Wrench Gang
Dario Fo. The Accidental Death of an Anarchist
Course packet
Recommended
William Bright. A Coyote Reader
William Shakespeare. King Lear
William Shakespeare. A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Course Schedule
Week 1
Introductions
TRICKSTERS IN MYTHOLOGY
Reading: Aristotle, Homer
Week 2
Reading: Bright
(Recommended: Toelken)
Reading: Pelton, Owomoyela, Harris
Week 3
Exam 1
MEDIEVAL LAUGHTER
Reading: Rabelais
Week 4
COMEDY & THE GROTESQUE – THE CARNIVALESQUE
Reading: Bakhtin
Week 5
SHAKESPEARE’S FOOLS
Reading/Presentation: Shakespeare
COMMEDIA DELL’ARTE
Week 6
THE CIRCUS
Film: TBA
(Recommended Film: P.T. Barnum: America’s Greatest Showman)
Exam 2
FROM STAGE TO SCREEN: SLAPSTICK, VAUDEVILLE, & “CLASSIC” FILM COMEDY
Films: “The Rink,” “Cops”
Week 7
Duck Soup
A PSYCHOANALYTIC APPROACH TO JOKES
Reading: Freud
Week 8
TRICKSTERS AND CLOWNS – UPDATED
Reading: Fo
Reading: Rubin
Film: The Pie’s the Limit
Week 9
Reading: Abbey
Week 10
Reading: Phelan
Conclusions