Tricksters can be cunning or foolish or both. Often, this bending or breaking of rules takes the form of tricks or thievery. The trickster crosses and often breaks both physical and societal rules: Tricksters 'violate principles of social and natural order, playfully disrupting normal life and then re-establishing it on a new basis.' Lewis Hyde describes the trickster as a 'boundary-crosser'. Tricksters, as archetypal characters, appear in the myths of many different cultures. In mythology and the study of folklore and religion, a trickster is a character in a story ( god, goddess, spirit, human or anthropomorphisation) who exhibits a great degree of intellect or secret knowledge and uses it to play tricks or otherwise disobey normal rules and defy conventional behavior. The trickster figure Reynard the Fox as depicted in an 1869 children's book by Michel Rodange For other uses, see Trickster (disambiguation).
