Alan Dundes (1934-2005) An Appreciation

Alan Dundes, the preeminent folklorist, died of a heart attack at age 70 on March 30, 2005, while teaching a seminar on folklore theory at the University of California, Berkeley. A beloved, prize-winning teacher, he established folklore as an academic discipline. In 1993 he was the first American to receive the Pitre Prize’s Sigillo d’Oro (Seal of Gold), a lifetime achievement award for his work in folklore. His interests spanned folklore theory, the history of folkloristics, symbolism, and the application of psychoanalytic theory to folklore. He pioneered in the psychoanalytic study of folklore as well as in vastly expanding the range of subject matter. His psychoanalytic viewpoint was classically Freudian.

Dundes employed psychoanalytic interpretation to unearth the meaning of folklore and used folklore methodology to validate psychoanalytic theory. He went beyond conventional folkloristic collection, description, and classification and inquired into the “why” (the meaning) of folklore in the first place. For instance, he asked why the belief in the evil eye should exist at all. In Interpreting Folklore (1980), he wrote that, “Folklore furnishes a socially sanctioned outlet for cultural pressure points and individual anxieties.” In short, it answers a human need.

Alan Dundes was born in New York City on September 8, 1934, and completed his high school education there. He began studying music at Yale, but later switched to English, earning his B.A. in 1955. After two years in the U.S. Navy, he returned to Yale to earn a masters in teaching English in 1958. He received his Ph.D. in folklore from Indiana University in 1962. He began teaching in the anthropology department at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1963, and taught there as professor of anthropology and folklore until his death. He is survived by his wife Carolyn, his children Alison, Lauren, and David, and six grandchildren.

There was little that Dundes’ acumen and wit did not touch. For him, conventional folkloristic studies of superstition, ritual, myth, and fable were only the beginning of folklore’s compass. Likewise he found plenty of folkloristic value in complex societies as well as in simpler, preliterate ones. In over 40 years of research and writing, his data came to encompass children’s games; everyday speech; cultural metaphors of power and prestige; cockfighting; North American Indian folktales; the bullroarer; Jesus as Indo-European hero; Xerox photocopies of cartoons, stories, poems, and proverbs; latrinalia (bathroom graffiti); jokes (e.g., light-bulb jokes) and sick humor (e.g., jokes about people with handicaps); T-shirt slogans; Cinderella; Little Red Riding Hood; the Flood Myth; the evil eye; chain letters; and far more. He authored over 250 scholarly articles and he authored, co-authored, or edited 32 books. He co-authored five books with Carl R. Pagter on “urban folklore.”

Dundes did not shrink from controversy or write only on emotionally “safe” subjects. He argued that sexual and racial jokes are “socially sanctioned outlets for expressing taboo ideas and subjects.” In 1978, he published in Western Folklore an essay titled “Into the Endzone for a Touchdown: A Psychoanalytic Consideration of American Football,” in which he interpreted American football as a masculinity initiation rite that is “a ritualized form of homosexual rape.”

In 1981, as Editor of The Journal of Psychoanalytic Anthropology, I had the privilege of reading and publishing Dundes’ journal-length essay titled, “Life is Like a Chicken Coop Ladder: A Study of German National Character Through Folklore.” The essay was subsequently published as a book by Columbia University Press in 1984 and then updated in 1989 and published with Wayne State University Press. In it he drew upon scatological data from German folklore and from it demonstrated national character and linked anal eroticism to the Holocaust. (I might add that I received a generous telephone call from Dr. Dundes, in which he said that he would now sleep better knowing that this paper was being published.) In 1983, he published “Auschwitz

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Jokes” (with T. Hauschild) in Western Folklore. In 1999, he published Holy Writ as Oral Lit: The Bible as Folklore, in which he attempted to solve mysteries and contradictions that stemmed from the days when the stories were transmitted orally.

A sampling of Dundes’ books includes: The Morphology of North American Indian Folktales (1964); (as editor) The Study of Folklore (1965); Interpreting Folklore (1980); (as editor) The Evil Eye: A Folklore Casebook (1981); (as editor) Sacred Narrative: Readings in the Theory of Myth (1984); Life Is Like a Chicken Coop Ladder: A Study of German National Character Through Folklore (1984); Cracking Jokes: Studies of Sick Humor Cycles and Stereotypes (1987); (as editor) The Flood Myth (1988); Folklore Matters (1989); Little Red Riding Hood (1989); (as editor) The Blood Libel Legend: A Casebook in Anti-Semitic Folklore (1991); (with Carl R. Pagter) Work Hard and You Shall Be Rewarded: Urban Folklore from the Paperwork Empire (1992); (as editor) The Vampire: A Casebook (1998); Holy Writ as Oral Lit: The Bible as Folklore (1999); (with Carl R. Pagter) Why Don’t Sheep Shrink in the Rain? A Further Collection of Photocopier Folklore (1999); The Shabbat Elevator and Other Sabbath Subterfuges: An Unorthodox Study of Circumventing Custom and Jewish Character (2002); and Passing Through Customs: Essays by a Freudian Folklorist (2003).

As a measure of the esteem with which Dundes was held, in 1993, a volume of the distinguished The Psychoanalytic Study of Society series was dedicated to “Essays in Honor of Alan Dundes.” In 1996, a Festschrift was published, titled Folklore Interpreted: Essays in Honor of Alan Dundes. He will be sorely missed by those to whom he gave generously, in person and in word. May the example of his enthusiastic and meticulous work inspire our own.

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