Structural Analysis of Trickster Tales

This weekend I read an article by Jay Edwards titled, "Structural Analysis of the Afro-American Trickster Tale" (Black American Literature Forum, Winter 1981). The article pegged something that had been festering in the back of my mind, which was, is the trickster character and his characteristics the only similarity in all trickster tales? I think I have been influenced by reading chapter 3 in Hynes & Doty to marginalize trickster tales to only the trickster and the traits that reappear in all trickster tales. When I think about Hyde, the movie, or cultural trickster figures, I think mostly about the character and how he is universal, how his actions reveal his traits, which can be seen in all tricksters. But this bothers me because, like I wrote, it is marginalizing the tales. Edwards writes that some trickster studies are problematic in this way: "By not basing his comparison on structures, the emphasis is shifted from degrees of sharing among the tales to what is unique about them. Since each plot is ultimately unique, the only thing which unites them is the ludic unpredictability of the trickster himself" (156). So, instead of this approach, Edwards showcases other critics efforts to classify folktales based on differences in structures. These include syntagmatic analysis, syntagmatic-paradigmatic-generative approach, and generative-transformational analysis. I'd defiantly have to read the article again to really understand each approach, but the article includes figures and graphs and even formulas to illustrate the trickster's tale. It seems like each maps his actions to different and probable outcomes; some describe forms of plots in terms of simple and complex. Anyway, it just made me think more about the structure of the tales. This article deals with Afro-American trickster tales. Do you think there are similarities in other cultures? Or are all trickster tales similar in structure? Edwards ponders these questions to, "The preference for different kinds of trickster roles among different cultures raises interesting questions about the function of the trickster, and whether any universal definition of the trickster is possible" (160). But like us, he is still thinking of an answer.