Alan Dundes

Alan Dundes – Life, Career, and Famous Quotes

Explore the life and work of Alan Dundes (1934–2005), the influential American folklorist and educator who helped transform folklore into a serious academic discipline. Discover his theories, controversies, and memorable quotations.

Introduction

Alan Dundes was an American folklorist, educator, and scholar whose bold, wide-ranging work reshaped folklore studies in the 20th century. He was deeply committed to treating folklore as serious, theoretically grounded scholarship rather than mere “curiosities.” Dundes’s curious mind, provocative interpretations, and prolific output made him one of the most celebrated—and sometimes controversial—figures in modern folkloristics.

Because folklore—stories, jokes, customs, proverbs—lives in everyday life, Dundes’s work helps us see how people express what they often take for granted. His investigations into humor, myth, national character, and marginalized speech pushed the boundaries of what folkloristics could explain.

Early Life and Family

Alan Dundes was born on September 8, 1934, in New York City. His father was a lawyer and his mother a musician (or music teacher), and the household was not strictly religious, though Dundes identified as a secular Jew.

He met his future wife, Carolyn, during his early university days at Yale. They remained married for nearly five decades, raising three children (one son, two daughters) and having grandchildren.

Youth, Education, and Early Career

Dundes pursued English language / literature at Yale University, where he earned a B.A. and an M.A.T. in English. During his Yale years, he joined the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC), anticipating military service. He was commissioned as a naval communications officer. However, when the ship he would have served aboard already had a communications officer, Dundes took on a different role maintaining artillery aboard the ship in the Mediterranean for about two years.

After his service, he enrolled at Indiana University Bloomington to study folklore, mentored by prominent folklorist Richard Dorson. He completed his Ph.D. (in 1962) with a dissertation titled The Morphology of North American Indian Folktales.

Dundes then briefly taught in the English Department at the University of Kansas before being recruited to University of California, Berkeley in 1963. At Berkeley, he would remain for the rest of his career—over 40 years as a professor of anthropology and folklore.

Career, Contributions & Theoretical Approach

Folklore as Scholarly Discipline

One of Dundes’s enduring missions was to elevate folklore from a realm of quaint curiosities to a rigorous, theoretically informed discipline. He argued that collecting “folk items” was insufficient; scholars must interpret, theorize, and contextualize.

He advocated a broad, flexible definition of “folk”—not just rural or illiterate populations but any group of people sharing a trait, identity, or tradition. He also emphasized that folklore encompasses multiple domains: verbal (jokes, proverbs), material (objects, artifacts), customary (rituals, daily habits), and folkspeech (idioms, slang).

Psychoanalytic & Symbolic Interpretation

Dundes is well known for applying psychoanalytic theory (especially Freudian ideas) to folk materials: jokes, myths, symbols, rituals. He viewed much folklore as a means to express unconscious desires, tensions, or anxieties.

He introduced conceptual tools to structural folkloristics, such as allomotif (parallel motifs) and motifemes (thematic units), to analyze motifs in folktales.

Prolific Scholarship

Dundes published more than 250 articles across diverse journals and edited or authored around a dozen full books. Some of his notable works include:

• The Morphology of North American Indian Folktales (1964)

• Interpreting Folklore (1980)

• Life Is Like a Chicken Coop Ladder: A Study of German National Character Through Folklore (1984)

• Cracking Jokes: Studies of Sick Humor Cycles & Stereotypes (1987)

• From Game to War and Other Psychoanalytic Essays on Folklore (1997)

• Holy Writ as Oral Lit: The Bible as Folklore (1999)

• The Shabbat Elevator and Other Sabbath Subterfuges (2002)

Dundes also edited influential anthologies like The Study of Folklore (1965) and Sacred Narrative: Readings in the Theory of Myth.

Teaching & Influence

At Berkeley, Dundes taught both large undergraduate folklore courses (sometimes called the “Jokes Course”) and advanced seminars in folklore theory, history, and psychoanalytic approaches. His popular introductory classes could attract hundreds of students; final assignments often asked students to collect and analyze dozens of folk items, which cumulatively contributed to his archives. He was also a mentor to many students who went on to become influential folklorists themselves.

He received Berkeley’s Distinguished Teaching Award in 1994. In 2000, an anonymous former student donated one million dollars in his name to establish a Distinguished Professorship in Folkloristics at Berkeley, securing the future of folklore scholarship there.

Controversy & Critical Reception

Dundes was no stranger to controversy. His bold interpretations and willingness to probe taboo subjects stirred strong reactions.

One of his more notorious works is “Into the Endzone for a Touchdown: A Psychoanalytic Consideration of American Football”, in which he suggested possible homoerotic subtexts in football culture—a publication that earned him serious pushback and even threats.

As president of the American Folklore Society in 1980, he delivered a controversial address later published as Life is Like a Chicken Coop Ladder, in which he argued for an anal-erotic fixation in German national character based on folk idioms and customs. The paper provoked harsh objection; many folklorists distanced themselves, and Dundes avoided the AFS annual meeting for years afterward.

Critics have accused him of overreliance on psychoanalysis, selective evidence gathering, and speculative leaps from linguistic or symbolic connections to cultural personality. Some question whether all folklore can (or should) be read through psychological lenses. Nevertheless, many appreciate that he challenged folklorists to think deeper and more courageously about meaning, context, and interpretation.

Legacy and Influence

Dundes is often called “the most renowned folklorist of his time.” He was the first folklorist elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2001). He won the Pitrè Prize, an international lifetime award in folklore, in 1993. He served as president of the American Folklore Society in 1980.

His work inspired future generations of folklorists to be bold in theory, interdisciplinary in method, and unafraid of challenging taboos. Many current folklorists still engage with (“push back against” or build upon) Dundes’s approach.

At Berkeley, the endowed Dundes Professorship and the extensive folklore archives continue to support research and teaching in ways that reflect his intellectual spirit.

Personality, Style, and Approach

Dundes was known for his sharp wit, intellectual audacity, and love of provocative ideas. He believed folklore often operates at the edges of acceptable discourse and that pushing those edges reveals deeper truths.

Though his interpretations could seem daring, he maintained that being provocative was often a sign that one was touching on hidden tensions. He once said, regarding strong reactions: “If people react strongly, I’ve probably struck a nerve.”

He also emphasized the playful, even mischievous side of folklore. Dundes appreciated jokes, riddles, and slips as serious data—not frivolous.

In the classroom, his style was engaging, often involving humor, challenge, and deep questioning. His students remember him as demanding but inspiring.

Notable Quotes by Alan Dundes

Here are several memorable quotes often attributed to Dundes:

• “Many of us as children were told, ‘Don’t ask questions.’ Folklore is a grown-up way of asking questions.”

• “If people react strongly, I’ve probably struck a nerve.”

• “Folklore is the voice of the people; a form of social discourse about what matters. In that sense, folklore matters.” (paraphrase from his essays)

• “Folkloristics is the scientific study of folklore just as linguistics is the scientific study of language.”

• “The task of folklore scholarship is not merely to preserve, but to interpret, to theorize, and to make sense of what people say, do, and believe.” (a representative summary of his approach)

Lessons and Insights from Dundes’s Life & Work

1. Be fearless in inquiry. Dundes challenged orthodoxy, intellectual boundaries, and comfortable assumptions in order to dig deeper.

2. Balance data and interpretation. He insisted that scholarship must go beyond gathering material to theorizing meaning.

3. Take the everyday seriously. Folklore—jokes, idioms, behaviors—is not trivial; it reveals beliefs, tensions, and worldviews.

4. Embrace interdisciplinarity. Dundes merged anthropology, linguistics, psychology, literary criticism, and more.

5. Foster long-term institutional support. His efforts to endow a chair showed how scholars can safeguard the future of a field.

Conclusion

Alan Dundes lives on as one of the central figures in modern folkloristics—an academic visionary who insisted that folklore deserves the full weight of theory, critique, and intellectual rigor. His provocative interpretations, expansive scope, and daring spirit challenged scholars to think more deeply about the stories, jokes, and customs we often dismiss.