Abstract
This article is a comparative study of Sang Kancil, the Malaysian folkloric trickster character with Brer Rabbit (African-American) and Reynard the Fox (French and Dutch) in order to explain the relationship between the Jungian archetypes and Neo-archetypes that may be found in trickster tales found in the printed medium. An analysis of the Sang Kancil stories was conducted by comparing them to these Trickster stories from other cultures to identify the similarities in the trope of the trickster to determine the ways in which Trickster tales have been used to convey messages of resistance against injustice and impart moral lessons, as well as pointing out the importance of intelligence and wit to solve problems. To limit the corpus due to the countless different Trickster tales around the world, we have only used these two animal tricksters who are the most congruent with Sang Kancil. Following from this, the article examines the commonalities in the neo-archetypal elements present in all of the studied tale types which correspond to the ways in which these tricksters are Andersonian cultural artefacts in the cultural imaginary, disseminated through both oral and print mediums. This is due to the well-documented and widespread sources of print literature on both Brer Rabbit and Reynard the Fox. By studying the commonalities of the tales through the archetypal elements present, Sang Kancil may be determined to be an Andersonian cultural artefact in the cultural imagination.
Highlights
Jack Zipes writes that we need to start thinking "out of the box, from the margins” about the "potential for genuine defiance that might contribute to alternative ways of relating to one another with dignity and compassion" (2019, p. 245)
Animal trickster? This is the focus of this article, via the agency allotted by the figure of Sang Kancil as a cultural artefact
Reynard and Brer Rabbit have been chosen as a basis of comparison due to the many works that highlight the relevance of these two tricksters in relation to cultural identity and may be seen to be cultural artefacts, as this paper argues
Summary
Jack Zipes writes that we need to start thinking "out of the box, from the margins” about the "potential for genuine defiance that might contribute to alternative ways of relating to one another with dignity and compassion" (2019, p. 245). This article interrogates the ways in which the trickster figure of the Malaysian folkloric character of Sang Kancil corresponds to Benedict Anderson’s notion of cultural artefacts. Anderson termed the definition of cultural artefacts, as “spontaneous distillation of a complex 'crossing' of discrete historical forces” when first created They become “established when they turn 'modular', having the capability of being transplanted, into self-consciousness, with varying degrees of social terrains” The article examines Sang Kancil in relation to the perspective of print culture and compares this figure to the figure of Brer Rabbit and Reynard the Fox in order to unpack the cross -cultural significance of the animal trickster and the ways in which these narratives are political narratives of resistance
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