April Fools

In light of yesterday, I thought a post honoring some of my favorite tricksters in literature couldn’t be more appropriate. At an early age, my parents would rock me to sleep with tales of Brer Rabbit and Puss and Boots. In middle school, I first met Shakespeare’s Puck, whose clever schemes single-handedly convinced me that the playwright wasn’t as boring as he seemed. Last year, I was surprised to encounter  these folk in my course on Medieval Literature. As we read Sir Tomas Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur, it seemed like almost every quest contained at least one disguised knight. None of these examples, however, compares to the tricks conjured up by Twain in Huck Finn (at least for me). The Duke and the King’s cons, among others, will forever make the novel synonymous with trickery.

Enough about me. Do you have any other favorite trickster characters, novels, or films? Has anyone ever played a memorable joke on you?