Parsing through Customs: Essays by a Freudian Folklorist

by Alan Dundes

Overview

In these stimulating essays, Alan Dundes presents a history of psychoanalytic studies of folklore while also showing how folklore methodology can be used to clarify and validate psychoanalytic theory. Dundes’ work is unique in its symbolic analysis of the ordinary imagination. His data are children’s games, folktales, everyday speech, cultural metaphors for power and prestige, and rituals associated with childbirth.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780299112639
Publisher:	University of Wisconsin Press
Publication date:	03/28/2003
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	232
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Alan Dundes (1934–2005) was professor of anthropology and folklore at the University of California, Berkeley, and published ten books with the University of Wisconsin Press, including The Vampire: A Casebook; The Blood Libel Legend; and Cinderella: A Casebook. He was also the editor of Recollecting Freud by Isidor Sadger.

Table of Contents

	Preface	vii
	Acknowledgments	xv
1	The Psychoanalytic Study of Folklore	3
2	Heads or Tails: A Psychoanalytic Study of Potlatch	47
3	The Strategy of Turkish Boys' Verbal Dueling Rhymes (with Jerry W. Leach and Bora Ozkok)	82
4	The Piropo and the Dual Image of Women in the Spanish-Speaking World (with Marcelo M. Suarez-Orozco)	118
5	Couvade in Genesis	145
6	The Symbolic Equivalence of Allomotifs in the Rabbit-Herd (AT 570)	167
7	The American Game of "Smear the Queer" and the Homosexual Component of Male Competitive Sport and Warfare	178
	Bibliography	197
	Index	211

Editorial Reviews

"More than just calling for a methodological awakening, it presents a number of case studies . . . all of which are evocatively and convincingly illuminated through the psychoanalytic perspective."—New York Times Book Review

From the Publisher