Gershon Legman (1917–1999)
Auteur de The Limerick
A propos de l'auteur
Crédit image: photo from The Union Recorder, 1970
Séries
Œuvres de Gershon Legman
La Culpabilité des Templiers "suivie de" L'innocence des Templiers par Henry Ch. Lea, de Les Templiers et le culte des… (1966) 22 exemplaires
Rationale of the Dirty Joke: An Analysis of Sexual Humour, First Series {Volume 1} (1972) 17 exemplaires
Rationale of the Dirty Joke: An Analysis of Sexual Humour, First Series {Volume 2} (1968) 14 exemplaires
Neurotica — Directeur de publication — 3 exemplaires
Neurotica, Vol. 1, No. 2 1 exemplaire
Oeuvres associées
Étiqueté
Partage des connaissances
- Nom canonique
- Legman, G.
- Nom légal
- Legman, Gershon
- Autres noms
- Legman, George
de la Glannège, Roger-Maxe - Date de naissance
- 1917-11-02
- Date de décès
- 1999-02-23
- Sexe
- male
- Nationalité
- USA
- Lieu de naissance
- Scranton, Pennsylvania, USA
- Lieu du décès
- Opio, Bar-sur-Loup, Alpes-Maritimes, France
- Cause du décès
- complications of a stroke
- Lieux de résidence
- Scranton, Pennsylvania, USA
La Jolla, California, USA
La Clé des Champs, Valbonne, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azûr, France - Études
- University of Michigan
- Professions
- folklorist
humorist
cultural critic - Organisations
- University of California, San Diego (writer in residence, 1964-1965)
- Courte biographie
- Gershon Legman (1917-1999) was an American cultural critic and folklorist, best known for his books The Rationale of the Dirty Joke (1968) and The Horn Book: Studies in Erotic Folklore and Bibliography (1964).
Born in 1917 in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Legman was the son of Emil and Julia Friedman Legman, both of Hungarian-Jewish descent. He was educated at Scranton's Central High School, where journalist Jane Jacobs and screenwriter and film director Cy Endfield were classmates. He enrolled in the University of Michigan for one semester in the fall of 1935, but left without sitting for his exams. He then settled in New York City where for a number of years he was a part-time freelance assistant to the physician and sexological researcher Robert Latou Dickinson at the New York Academy of Medicine while simultaneously working in the bookshop of Jacob Brussel, where a brisk business was done in publishing and selling contraband erotica. He also spent long hours at the New York Public Library acquiring an autodidactic education. In the late 1940s he became the editor of the little magazine Neurotica.
Throughout his career Legman was an independent scholar without institutional affiliation, except for one year during 1964-1965 when he was a writer in residence at the University of California, San Diego, in the first year of the new campus' undergraduate programs. He pioneered the serious academic study of erotic and taboo materials in folklore.
(source: Wikipedia)
Membres
Critiques
Prix et récompenses
Vous aimerez peut-être aussi
Auteurs associés
Statistiques
- Œuvres
- 27
- Aussi par
- 10
- Membres
- 1,037
- Popularité
- #24,831
- Évaluation
- 3.7
- Critiques
- 16
- ISBN
- 35
- Favoris
- 2
There are many variations on this publication, as a result, but my Panther edition collects 1700 limericks in two volumes. The first volume includes a decent introductory essay on the history of the poetic form, and the second volume contains a short "rhyming dictionary" at the end. Both volumes give extensive (and often dirty) notes on the limericks.
Every possible topic is covered - from incest and coprophilia to necrophilia and prostitution. If you're in any way offended by things, this may not be for you, and truthfully I hope no-one is completely comfortable with all 1700 poems herein! But the importance of Legman's work was just as much to challenge our assumptions, to make us - and particularly Americans - aware that their society's repression wasn't necessarily natural, that the "dirtiness" of 5-line poems was a completely legitimate way of enjoying oneself. Most interestingly in his inroduction, Legman comments that limericks are much more popular amongst the highly-educated. He suggests that the ornate fringes of the poetry, the inter-rhymes, the deceptively innocent opening lines, they all attract people more subtly attuned to the nuances of the joke, while the slight pretention makes them less attractive to people for whom dirty jokes alone are attractive. I think there's also the fact that, because limericks can be so depraved, they require a mind who can enjoy the joke without necessarily endorsing the sentiment in real life. If this cheeky volume is evidence, it's well worth it.… (plus d'informations)