Tricksters and Their Audiences

How Combative Rhetoric Informs the Iliad, The Flying of Loki, and Hamilton: An American Musical

by Colleigh Stein

In oral societies, one method for characterization requires the recitation of deeds. Whether by chronicling family histories before introducing an individual, listing the ships of a fleet before acknowledging an army, or recounting heroic deeds before speaking to a superior figure, identities were constructed through oral narration. One specific method of speech that this paper examines is known as “flyting.” The term denotes a performed rhetoric, an art form of combative orality, in which participants engage in insults and braggery to prove their verbal dexterity for a greater purpose such as influencing the actions of a leader, or promoting one’s own standing among the social order. There are always stakes involved in the act of flyting that necessitate an audience, a judge, and a victor. Since oral tales relied on auditory spectatorship, the action of flyting becomes inherently performative. Just as a battle requires vanguards and soldiers, a flyting ring requires combatants and spectators. Without an audience, there is no way for the tales to be propagated, no purpose for the bragging and oneupmanship. The audience become the judges of the match.

This paper seeks to examine this level of performativity and explore flyting as used by Odysseus in the Iliad, Loki the Poetic Eddas, and Hamilton the Broadway musical. None of these characters represent a traditional protagonist – if anything, they toe the line of antagonist in the context of the discussed scenes. Odysseus and Loki are known tricksters; forefather Alexander Hamilton, likewise, fits the mold well. He uses cunning to mock and resist authority – whether it be the British or his fellow government officials, destroying convention in his quest to create new systems. Even when slandered and threatened and punished, he continues to fight back against his attackers by turning their insults against them. As representations of the trickster, each of these three figures possess ingrained stereotypes in the mind of their audiences, and thus rely on performed constructions of the self through flyting in order to influence the narrative in their favour. In “The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life”, Sociologist Erving Goffman calls this the “tendency for performers to offer their observers an impression that is idealized” and thus they will “incorporate and exemplify the officially accredited values of the society.”^[1] Between Odysseus’s address to the Achaeans, Loki’s insults to the Æsir, and Hamilton’s Cabinet debate with Jefferson, the speakers utilize flyting to construct an ideal self in order to allow for the audience to actively participate in the narrative, acting as judge and jury for the verbal battleground.

Each narrative has two separate audiences: the internal, and the external. Odysseus’ fellow Achaeans listen to his address, Loki speaks before the Æsir, or gods, while Hamilton and Jefferson stand surrounded by the President and members of his cabinet. In the context of their orality, the Iliad and Poetic Eddas would have been recited aloud and Hamilton is, of course, performed on a Broadway stage. These external listeners represent the reference point of “audience,” whether they are the Greeks, the Norse, or the modern theatregoer.  Moreover, those who listened to these performances would have possessed a basic knowledge of the story and characters: an individual in Ancient Greece has heard the feats of Odysseus both at Troy and the open sea; a Viking in medieval Scandinavia knows the pantheon of Norse gods; a person educated in the American school system has heard of the Founding Fathers. Even in the case of an audience member with no prior knowledge, the stories provide enough context clues based around how Odysseus is described, how the Æsir react vehemently to Loki, and how Burr introduces Hamilton with unsavory epithets. They each are presented by other characters as crafty, evil, or hotheaded – in other words, not entirely trustworthy. As a result, each must contend with this reputation and spin the narrative in their favor. Goffman acknowledges this interplay between performer and audience, noting how “the more information the audience has about the performer, the less likely it is that anything they learn during the interaction will radically influence them.”^[2] Therefore, if prior information is possessed or implied, each character must then fight to change the audience’s opinions of them. This is achieved through flyting.

In Book 2 of the Iliad, Odysseus addresses the Achaeans who feel compelled to give up fighting after a nine year stalemate. In this segment, one major difference sets Odysseus apart from our other two case studies. While he may be known by the epithet “a man of twists-and-turns” in the Odyssey, he is in fact portrayed as “the equal to Zeus in counsel” in the Iliad.^[3] Therefore, in this case, he does not have to battle against the audience to sway their opinion of him. Nonetheless, he employs flyting to win the Achaeans on to his side and change their hard-held convictions. While Odysseus seems to have quelled most of the men, the flyting truly begins when one soldier, Thersites, steps forward to challenge him using “any word he thought might be amusing to the Argives.”^[4] Thersites, then, has entered the performance with the goal of being a showman and a braggart. He turns his attention against Agamemnon, aiming to shame the king and win others over to his side of apparent anarchy. Thersites lists the hoard of Agamemnon’s wealth and implies that all of his possessions were begotten through the deeds of soldiers, seeking to damage the king’s reputation by suggesting that Agamemnon uses others to acquire his power. He then turns his attack upon the soldiers for following Agamemnon, comparing them to women in an attempt to damage their egos. Here, Odysseus steps in to challenge him. He begins by firmly situating Thersites in his hierarchical place, stating that he has no standing to argue with princes; that his words are spoken out of nothing but jealousy as Thersites is a hated figure. He mocks Thersites for acting as though he had a gift of prophecy and could foretell how the events at Troy would play out, subtly hinting to the soldiers that they could very well be throwing away their entire chance at glory, or kleos, on the words of a jealous man. He denounces the words Thersites speaks as “nothing but scandal,”^[5] implying that no evidence exists to back his claims. Odysseus concludes with a threat against Thersites if he ever again finds the other man “playing the fool.”^[6] The context here might suggest that a fool is one who provides false or outlandish counsel, which forms an opposition against Odysseus and his own god-like counsel. Again, the audience receives a reminder that the words of Thersites hold no weight despite his oratory style. Odysseus as a figure holds weight and influence among the Achaeans, his word is one that gets propagated with credibility. Therefore, Odysseus strategizes to put a brand upon Thersites as a shameful man, which will be repeated and follow Thersites, damaging his honor. Upon the conclusion of the flyting, the assembled Achaeans offer the following verse:

        “Come now: Odysseus has done excellent things by thousands, bringing forward good counsels and ordering armed encounters; but now this is far the best thing he ever has accomplished among the Argives, to keep this thrower of words, this braggart out of assembly.” ^[7]

This moment marks the beginning of the shift in defining the heroic from feats and deeds in battle to cleverness and skill with words^[8]. Odysseus becomes honoured for winning a battle, only this battle was a verbal one. Despite the fact that he has been an army general, the Achaeans still view flyting as his most heroic deed to date – perhaps they give laurels to winning these verbal battlegrounds as they present a greater connection to the audience than a physical clash, where the victor is always clear. The audience is invited to participate as a judge, evaluating the contrasting speeches and determining which combatant spoke with more cogency and conviction. The victor becomes the one who then remains in their collective consciousness. Thus through his speechmaking, Odysseus crafts an accomplished version of himself that gets remembered and propagated.

        While Odysseus did not suffer as much from preconceived prejudices, Loki faces an opposite challenge in the Poetic Eddas. In the Lokasenna, or Flyting of Loki, the titular god has been cast out of a feast in the hall of the ocean god, Aegir. Angered by his treatment, Loki returns to the scene with the goal of sowing discontent. Here, he resides amongst the gods, all of whom come with established heroism and exultation, while Loki himself is reviled as evil, a trickster, and a liar. To convince the audience of his judgement, he allows the gods to put up a fair fight, yet at each turn it becomes apparent that he remains in clear control of the parameters.  Though Aegir’s attendant warns Loki that the gods have few kind words for him, and that he will face nothing but “reproach and abuse”^[9] upon reentry, he remains unfazed. Loki begins by immediately antagonising all of the gods, the insults continuing around the room before settling on Odin. To the All-Father, Loki retorts: “Often you did not grant victory to him whom you should have, but to duller men.”^[10] He implies that Odin accepted unworthy men to join him in Valhalla. Using the common ego-damaging strategy, Odin attempts to turn the tables on Loki by reminding the trickster of a time when he remained “under the earth giving milk as a cow or a woman” and bearing babies, and that these were “womanish ways.”^[11] Loki now draws another of his verbal traps, for rather than denying the claim, he reminds the assembled gods of Odin working magic such that a volva, or female shaman, might perform, and that these were, likewise, “womanish ways.”^[12] Next, Loki insults fertility goddess Freya, who states his “tongue is false,”^[13] yet Loki denies nothing that the gods say, whereas they attempt to keep secrets and refute the intimate knowledge that he possesses. He uses each insult as an opportunity to reveal a shameful secret that the offending god seeks to hide. The audience therefore begins to trust Loki when he reveals that the other gods are as equally unsavory as he, and that although he may be a liar, he does not deny his nature as they do. One goddess, Skathi, reminds Loki that  he will eventually face punishment. Loki agrees, but reminds the assembled gods that he was “first and foremost among the slaughter” in the battle to seize Thiazi^[14]. Again, as entailed in the trickster trope, Odysseus, Loki, and Hamilton alike all face horrible punishments, and yet Loki reminds those assembled that regardless of his eventual fate, one cannot erase the heroic deeds that he has performed in battle. Finally, Thor tries to threaten Loki into submission, announcing that he will cast Loki into the east, where none will ever see him again, to which Loki responds with the following:

        “You should never tell to warriors of your voyage to the east. There you crouched, cowering, in the thumb of a glove, oh champion! You did not seem like Thor then.”^[15]

He uses Thor’s own reputation against him, insinuating that Thor is not living up to his own standards, or acting worthy of his name. Again, through Loki’s still in flyting, a god falls for his trick and, in trying to insult or threaten Loki, reveals a flaw of his own instead. This presents the audience with an interesting juxtaposition between the supposed noble figures of the Æsir and the ignoble Loki. To this point, Goffman states:

As members of the audience it is natural for us to feel that the impression the performer seeks to give may be true or false, genuine or spurious, valid or ‘phony.’ When we think of those who present a false front or ‘only’ a front, of those who dissemble, deceive, and defraud, we think of a discrepancy between fostered appearances and reality. We also think of the precarious position in which these performers place themselves, for at any moment in their performance an event may occur to catch them out and baldly contradict what they have openly avowed, bringing them immediate humiliation and sometimes permanent loss of reputation. ^[16]

Even though Loki may be an untrustworthy figure, he essentially makes the gods do his dirty work for him and accidentally reveal unsavory stories about themselves, damaging their reputation in turn. Loki may behave negatively or perform shameful deeds, but so too have these great gods, and unlike them, Loki does not try to keep it secret. As a result, the audience learns to trust the untrustworthy. To conclude the flyting, Thor again attempts a few more empty threats, before Loki at last says the following:

        “I spoke before the Ases, and before the sons of Ases, what my mind urged me to tell. But I will leave you now for I know your weight.”^[17]

With this, he reveals that every word he spoke was carefully planned. Loki presented himself as a master wordsmith, deftly dodging their verbal bullets and firing back barrages. He is not leaving because he has been beaten, but rather departs victorious with no match for his quick tongue.

        Hamilton: An American Musical presents a more modern mythology set in eighteenth century America. With the show, creator Lin-Manuel Miranda sought to offer a contemporary take on the American Foundation Myth by telling the story almost entirely through rap. In Act 2, Hamilton encounters Jefferson for the first time, and the ensuing Cabinet Meeting becomes dramatized in the form of a rap battle, a perfect modern parallel for flyting.^[18] The goal in presenting the Cabinet meetings as rap battles was, on the one hand, to take what may have otherwise been a stiff unrelatable scene and infuse it with new energy, making it accessible to the modern audience. This was perhaps best encapsulated by the response of young audience members to watching the Cabinet battles. The cast recounts the first time they performed the scene in front of an audience made up entirely of high school students and were greeted by “a sense of delight and surprise radiating from the crowd.”^[19] Actor Daveed Diggs, who played Jefferson, pointed out: “‘Battles are definitely part of youth culture now, . . . there are YouTube channels for rap battles.’”^[20] The youth felt empowered by the familiarity of the genre, and were not afraid to “let the competing rappers know what they thought;” during the crossfire of arguments and insultes, the actors “heard a lot of OHHHHHs and cheers.”^[21] Here, the audience has very clearly shifted from passive listeners to active participants. In offering their reactions to the bandying insults, the performance has permeated from the stage into the real world.

        The dynamic song “Cabinet Battle #1” features Hamilton and Jefferson facing off in a bid to decide the financial future of their newly fledged country. Just as in the Iliad, where flyting determined whether or not the Achaeans would flee Troy, and as in the Lokasenna where Loki sought to validate his position among the Æsir, the winner of the rap battle in Hamilton will determine the trajectory of the nation. As Lin Miranda puts it:

“The stakes are not ‘who’s the best rapper,’ the stakes are what direction are we going to go in as a country. Every rap battle sets a historical precedent, that is the highest stakes you can have for a rap battle. Higher even than 8 Mile.”^[22]

When George Washington arrives on stage, the audience already know these characters. Specifically, the audience may have more preconceived notions about Thomas Jefferson than Alexander Hamilton, since Jefferson was presented as a key figure amongst the forefathers, a genius lauded for his accomplishments. Hamilton, meanwhile, has always been more of a footnote: the man on the ten dollar bill, the man who started the National Bank, the man who died in a duel with Burr. These were the only identifiers that many possessed. Therefore, Hamilton must dedicate a larger portion of stage time to establish who he is, why he should be taken seriously, and why the audience ought to side with him over the more famous Jefferson when determining the direction of the fledgling country. Another benefit to the rap battle form is its association with lightning quick oratory displays. Traditionally, rap battles would be freestyle, whereas Hamilton was obviously scripted. However, the format retains a sense of spontaneity and improvisation conveyed through bantering, with each combatant layering performative aspects on top of their speech and reacting to the traded insults.^[23] 

The battle starts with Thomas extolling his cleverness with words, citing his coinage “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” which continues to be quoted to this day. He bolsters his reputation by pointing out his intelligence and ingenuity, taking justifiable credit for what would become a cornerstone of American ideology. After ensuring the audience recognizes his laurels, he shifts to the offensive and launches an attack on Hamilton’s character. He claims that, while his plan is populist and serves a collective sense of statehood, Hamilton’s is, by contrast, entirely self serving. Jefferson tries to suggest that the debt faced by New York should not affect Virginia, who bears no such hardship. Just like the Æsir, Jefferson has entrapped himself by presenting Hamilton with a perfect opportunity to reveal the objectionable aspects of his rhetoric and the South’s behavior. Like Loki, Hamilton seeks to break down his combatant’s reputation, using this offensive method to heighten his own reputation. He begins by painting Jefferson as aloof and unconcerned in his plantation estate, far from the problems the rest of the country faces. As Odysseus mocked Thersites for implying he knew how the war would turn out, so too does Hamilton scoff at Jefferson for presuming to know the best course of action for the country. He further attacks the Southerner’s reputation by pointing out the sheer hypocrisy of a slave owner advocating for liberty, and the audacity of such a man to provide ethics lessons. Finally, just like Loki reminding the gods of his position at the vanguard of battle, and Odysseus’s reputation as an army leader and counselor, Hamilton reminds the assembly that Jefferson was relaxing on another continent while Hamilton stood as Washington’s right hand man during the war. Thus, Hamilton maintains the image he has spent the first act curating, entices the audience to express their opinions of the match, and proves the worth of his opinion all through a series of carefully crafted curses.

Beyond trading insults in order to elevate one’s reputation and shame his opponent, flyting, at its core, aims to celebrate the one who possesses a greater mastery of words. Each phrase has to be coherent, planned, and effective. It relies on the perfect comeback to every situation. All three texts herein discussed include a moment where they convey this message. While Thersites may be a “fluent orator,”^[24] he has “endless speech” and is “disorderly,”^[25] contrasted against the “brilliant Odysseus”^[26] who swiftly steps in to silence him. Similarly, the attendant Eldir tries to deny Loki entrance to the hall, to which Loki dismisses him as having endless speech compared to Loki’s own cogency^[27]. When Bragi, the god of poetry and a clear master of words, stands against Loki, the trickster god calls him “the most wary in war and the shyest in shooting.”^[28] Bragi attempts a threat and calls Loki a liar, yet Loki decries him as nothing more than a clever bench ornament^[29], knowing that the other god lacks the will to back up his empty threats, just like Thersites’ hollow words. Finally, Jefferson attempts to paint himself as a master orator, utilizing seemingly wise words to show that Hamilton is the one who has created something incoherent and rambling. Hamilton then turns the tables by concisely summarizing his plan, calling out Jefferson’s hypocrisy, and shouting “keep ranting” to show the audience that Jefferson is merely running his mouth. He also declares Jefferson as “hesitant” and “reticent,”^[30] suggesting that like Bragi, he may try to present himself as a masterful orator, but he remains silent when it matters most. Thus, each text makes a clear differentiation between the rambling and grandstanding of the losing party and the eloquent oration of the winners – the key to a victorious flyting.

        The purpose behind flyting, then, is not to shame others in order to make oneself appear more honourable. Odysseus may gain prestige, but Loki amasses more hatred; Hamilton may have won the battle, but he also acquires enemies who accost him at every turn. The function, therefore, exists less in extolling one’s own virtue and instead resides in proving one’s worthiness to be heard. The use of rhetoric by these tricksters allows them to present a version of themselves they want the audience to see, remember, and propagate. They do not incoherently throw out insults, as some of their opponents may, but instead rely on skillful twisting of words to craft the audience’s perception. By engaging in flyting, the characters perform their identity and introduce an ideal self to the audience, who in turn become invited to participate in this construction. This form, as used across centuries, asks its audience not to simply sit back and absorb what they hear, but to engage with the performance, to actively dissect each word, to judge each character, and to determine who walks away victorious.

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