1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910793889303321

Autore

Davis Susan G. <1953->

Titolo

Dirty jokes and bawdy songs : the uncensored life of Gershon Legman / / Susan G. Davis [[electronic resource]]

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Urbana : , : University of Illinois Press, , 2020

ISBN

0-252-05145-9

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (279 pages)

Collana

Folklore studies in a multicultural world

Illinois scholarship online

Disciplina

398.2092

Soggetti

Folklorists - United States

Sex - Folklore - Research - History - 20th century

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Previously issued in print: 2019.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

The stranger -- Sex researcher -- Kinsey's bibliographer -- Love & death -- Neurotica -- Advanced studies in folklore -- "The ballad" and The horn book -- The key to the fields -- The hell drawer -- Under Mt. Cheiron.

Sommario/riassunto

Collector of sexual folklore. Cataloger of erotica. Tireless social critic. Gershon Legman's singular, disreputable resume made him a counter-cultural touchstone during his forty-year exile in France. Despite his obscurity today, Legman's prescient work and passion for the prurient laid the groundwork for our contemporary study of the forbidden. Susan G. Davis follows the life and times of the figure driven to share what he found in civilization's secret libraries. Self-taught and fiercely unaffiliated, Legman collected the risque on street corners and in theaters and dug it out of little-known archives. If the sexual humour he uncovered often used laughter to disguise hostility and fear, he still believed it indispensable to the human experience. Davis reveals Legman in all his prickly, provocative complexity as an outrageous nonconformist thundering at a wrong-headed world.