HUMOR, ORAL LITERATURE, AND LEGENDS:

by Don L. F. Nilsen English Department Arizona State University Tempe, AZ 85287-0302 ( [email protected] )

Beath, Paul Robert, ed. Febold Feboldson: Tall Tales from the Great Plains. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1959. Bennett, Gillian. Perspectives on Contemporary Legend 2 Volumes. Sheffield, England: Centre for English Cultural Tradition and Language, 1988. Bennett, Gillian, ed. Spoken in Jest. Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991. Bennett, Gillian, and Paul Smith. Contemporary Legend: The First Five Years. Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press. Bennett, Gillian, and Paul Smith, eds. Monsters with Iron Teeth, Perspectives on Contemporary Legend, III. Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, 1990. Bennett, Gillian, and Paul Smith, eds. A Nest of Vipers, Perspectives on Contemporary Legend, V. Sheffield, England: Sheffield Acadeemic Press, 1992. Bennett, Gillian, and Paul Smith, eds. The Questing Beast: Perspectives on Contemporary Legend IV. Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991. Bennett, Gillian, Paul Smith, and J. D. A. Widdowson, eds. Perspectives on Contemporary Legend, II. Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, 1989. Blair, Walter, ed. Half Horse, Half Alligator: The Growth of the Mike Fink Legend. Lincoln: Univ of Nebraska Press, 1956. Blair, Walter. Horse Sense in American Humor from Benjamin Franklin to Ogden Nash. NY: Russell and Russell, 1942. Blair, Walter. Tall Tale America: A Legendary History of Our Humorous Heroes. Chicago: Univ of Chicago Press, 1987. Botkin, B. A. A Treasury of American : Stories, Legends, Tall Tales.... NY: Bantam, 1948. Brown, Carolyn S. The Tall Tale in American Folklore and Literature. Knoxville, TN: Univ of Tennessee Press, 1987. Brunvand, Jan Harold, ed. American Folklore: An Encyclopedia. New , NY: Garland, 1995. Brunvand, Jan Harold. The and Other Lusty Urban Legends. New York, NY: W. W. Norton, 1993. Brunvand, Jan Harold. The and Other "New" Urban Legends. New York, NY: W. W. Norton, 1984. Brunvand, Jan Harold. Curses! Boiled Again! The Hottest Urban Legends Going. New York, NY: W. W. Norton, 1989. Brunvand, Jan Harold. The Mexican Pet: More 'New' Urban Legends and Some Old Favorites. New York, NY: W. W. Norton, 1986. Brunvand, Jan Harold. The Truth Never Stands in the Way of a Good Story. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2000. Brunvand, Jan Harold. "Urban Legends." in What's So Funny: Humor in American Culture. Ed. Nancy A. Walker. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1998, 145-154. Brunvand, Jan Harold. The : American Urban Legends and their Meanings. New York, NY: W. W. Norton, 1981. Byrne, Robert, ed. The 2,548 Best Things Anybody Ever Said. New York, NY: Galahad, 1996. Carlson, Richard Stocks. The Benign Humorists. NY: Archon: 1987. Caron, James E. "The Violence and Language of Swapping Lies: Towards a Definition of the American Tall Tale." Studies in American Humor 2nd Series 5.1 (1986): 27-35.

HUMOR, ORAL LITERATURE, AND LEGENDS, PAGE 1 Cohen, Daniel. Southern Fried Rat, and Other Gruesome Tales. NY: Avon, 1989. Cohn, Ruby. "Camp, Cruelty, Colloquialism." Comic Relief: Humor in Contemporary American Literature. Ed. Sarah Blacher Cohen. Urbana, Univ of Illinois Press, 1979, 281-304. Cox, James M. "Toward Vernacular Humor." Virginia Quarterly Review 46 (1970): 311-30. Craughwell, Thomas J. The Baby on the Car Roof and 222 More Urban Legends. New York, NY: and Leventhal, 2000. Derks, Peter. "Stories We Tell: The Survival Value of Humor." The World and I. 7.7 (1992): 671-680. Devine, P. K. Devine's Folklore of Newfoundland in Old Words, Phrases, and Expressions. St. Johns, Newfoundland, Canada: St. Johns Memorial University, 1997. Dickson, Paul. Toasts. NY: Delacorte, 1981. Dickson, Paul, and Joseph Golden. There are Alligators in Our Sewers: And Other American Credos. New York: Delacorte, 1983. Dorson, Richard M. Man and Beast in American Comic Legend. Bloomington: Indiana Univ Press, 1982. Dundes, Alan. Holy Writ as Oral Lit. Blue Ridge Summit, PA: Bowman and Littlefield, 1999. Dundes, Alan, and Carl R. Pagter. Work Hard and You Shall be Rewarded: Urban Folklore from the Paperwork Empire. Bloomington: Indiana Univ Press, 1975. Dundes, Alan, and Carl R. Pagter. When You're Up to Your Ass in Alligators: More Urban Folklore from the Paperwork Empire. Detroit, MI: Wayne State Univ Press, 1987. Ellis, Bill. "De Legendis Urbis: Modern Legends in Ancient Rome." Journal of American Folklore 96.380 (1983): 200-208. Feiner, Joel, and Stephan Marc Klein. "Graffiti Talks." Social Policy. 12.3 (1982): 47-53. Fine, Gary Alan. Manufacturing Tales: Sex and Money in Contemporary Legends. Knoxville, TN: Universxity of Tennessee Press, 1992. Finnigan, Joan. Laughing All the Way Home: Indigenous Humour of the Ottawa Valley. Toronto, Canada: Deneau, 1984. Finnigan, Joan. Legacies, Legends, and Lies: Indigenous HJumour of the Ottawa Valley. Toronto, Canada: Deneau, 1985. Finnigan, Joan. Some of the Stories I Told You Were True. Ottawa, Canada: Deneau and Greenberg, 1981. Geltrich-Ludgate, Brigitta. Are You Spoofing? An Anthology of Folkloristic Yarns and Such 1.2 (1984), 2.1 (1985), 2.2 (1986) Graham, E. E., M. J. Papa, and G. P. Brooks. "Functions of Humor in Conversation: Conceptualization and Measurement." Western Journal of Communication 56 (1992): 161-183. Grimes, W. "A Theory of Humor for Public Address: The Mirth Experience." Communication Monographs 22 (1955): 243-255. Gruner, Charles R. "Advice to the Beginning Speaker on Using Humor--What Research Tells Us." Communication Education 34 (1985): 142-146. Gruner, Charles. "The Effect of Humor in Dull and Interesting Informative Speeches." Central States Speech Journal 21 (1970): 160-166. Gruner, Charles R. "Effect of Humor on Speaker Ethos and Audience Information Gain." Journal of Communication 17 (1967): 228-233. Haslam, Thomas J. "Absentee Government, The Absurd Frontier, and the Laughable Origins of American Identity; or, the Twice-Told Fish Tale of Captain John Smith." Studies in American Humor NS 7 (1989): 58-66. Hill, Hamlin. "Modern American Humor: The Janus Laugh." College English 25 (1963): 170-76. Holman, C. Hugh, and William Harmon. A Handbook to Literature. 6th edition. New York: MacMillan, 1992. Huu, Ngoc. Vietnamese Folk-Tales Satire and Humor. Hanoi, Vietnam: Fourth Impression, 1990. Jones, Steven Swan. "Joke Transformation of Popular Fairy Tales: A Comparative Analysis of Fine Jokes and Their Fairy Tale Sources." Western Folklore 44 (1985): 97-114. Lull, P. E. "The Effectiveness of Humor in Persuasive Speeches." Speech Monographs 7 (1940): 26-40.

HUMOR, ORAL LITERATURE, AND LEGENDS, PAGE 2 Malotki, Ekkehart. Gullible Coyote. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizzona Press, 1985. Mamchak, P. Susan, and Steven R. Mamchak. Encyclopedia of School Humor: Icebreakers, Classics, Stories, Puns and Roasts for All Occasions. West Nyak, NY: Parker, 1987. Meine, Franklin J. ed. Tall Tales of the Southwest. NY: Alfred A. Knopf. 1946. Miller, Olive Beaupre, ed. Heroes, Outlaws, and Funny Fellows of American Popular Tales. New York, NY: Doubleday, 1940. Morreall, John. "Gossip and Humor." Good Gossip. Eds. Robert F. Goodman, and Aaron Ben-Ze'ev. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 56-64. Nilsen, Alleen Pace. "Imaginings from Our Ancestors: Classics, Myths, Legends, and Folklore." Your Reading: A Booklist for Junior High and Middle School Students. 8th Edition. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 1991, 193-204. Nilsen, Alleen Pace, and Don L. F. Nilsen. "Barbs of the West: Humor of the Western United States." The World and I (April, 1992): 663-670. Nilsen, Alleen Pace, and Don L. F. Nilsen. “Urban Legends.” Encyclopedia of 20th Century American Humor. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000, 95-97, 302-303. Nilsen, Don L. F. "Cohesion in Folk Language: Roman Jakobson's Model Tested to the Limit." The CEA Critic 45.2 (1983): 1-10. Nilsen, Don L. F. "Contemporary Legend: The Definition of a Genre." Kansas English 75.1 (1989): 5-10. Nilsen, Don L. F. "Humor in Oral American Literature" Humor in American Literature. New York: Garland Press, 1992, 523-528. Nilsen, Don L. F. "Mike Fink, James Kirk Paulding, and David Crockett: The Legends Vs. The Men." The Journal of the Mississippi Council of Teachers of English 12.1 (1990): 21-32. Nilsen, Don L. F. "Parody, Paradox, Nonsense, and Legends." Humor Scholarship: A Research Bibliography. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1993, 101-112. Norrick, Neal R. "Stock Conversational Witticisms." Journal of Pragmatics 8 (1984): 195-208. Peters, John G. "Saturnalia and Sanctuary: The Role of the Tale in `Watership Down." Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 6.1 (1993): 34-50. Pinsker, Sanford. "The Urban Tall Tale: Frontier Humor in a Contemporary Key." Comic Relief: Humor in Contemporary American Literature. Ed. Sarah Blacher Cohen. Urbana: Univ of Illinois Press, 1979, 249-62. Raju, Alison. "Decoding the Comic." Spoken in Jest. Ed. Gillian Bennett. Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991, 69-82. Randolph, Vance. Ozark Stories: Gruesome and Humorous Tales of the Supernatural in the Backwoods of the South. NY: Marshall Vance, 1982. Rourke, Constance. "The Tall Tale." Humor in America. Ed. Enid Veron. NY: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1976, 272-80. Ruch, Willibald, Salvatore Attardo, and Victor Raskin. "Toward an Empirical Verification of the General Theory of Verbal Humor." HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 6.2 (1993): 123-136. Russell, Ian. "'My Dear, Dear Friends': The Parodic Sermon in Oral Tradition." Spoken in Gest. Ed. Gillian Bennett. Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991. 237-256. Scholl, Peter A. Garrison Keillor. New York, NY: Twaine, 1993. Shay, Frank, ed. Here's Audacity! American Legendary Heroes. Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1967. Simpson, Jacqueline. "Urban Legends in the Pickwick Papers." Journal of American Folklore 96 (1983): 17-19. Smith, Paul. The Book of Nastier Legends. NY: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Smith, Paul. The Book of Nasty Legends. NY: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983. Smith, Paul. Perspectives on Contemporary Legend. Sheffield, England: Centre for English Cultural Tradition and Language, 1984. Smith, Ronald. Goldmine Comedy Record Price Guide Iola, WI: Krause, 1996. Sobol, Joseph Daniel. "Jack of a Thousand Faces: The Jack Tales as Appalachian Hero Cycle." North Carolina Folklore Journal 39.2 (1992): 77-108.

HUMOR, ORAL LITERATURE, AND LEGENDS, PAGE 3 Stephenson, William. The Play Theory of Mass Communication. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1987. Stevens, W. "On Using Humor in the Public Speech." Communication Quarterly 9 (1961): 10. Stoutenburg, Adrien, ed. American Tall Tales. New York, NY: Viking, 1966. Tacey, W. "Advice from a Speech Teacher: Put Humor in Your Speeches." Communication Quarterly 15 (1967): 23-25. Taggart, Bronwyn Carlton. The Big Book of Urban Legends. New York, NY: Paradox Press/DC Comics, 1994. Tandy, Jennette. Crackerbox Philosophers in American Humor and Satire. NY: Columbia Univ Press, 1925. Thompson, Stith. The Folktale. Berkeley, CA: Univ of California Press, 1946. Turner, Patricia. I Heard It Through the Grapevine. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1994. Vance, Randolph, ed. We Always Lie to Strangers: Tall Tales from the Ozarks. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1952. Vanpée, Dominique J. B. “Soft Information: Deviant Logic in Jokes, Rumors, and Stories.” Intelligent Techniques and Soft Computing in Nuclear Science and Engineering. Eds. Da Ruan, Hamid Aït Abderrahim, Pierre D’Hondt, and Etienne E. Kerre. (Proceedings of Conference in Bruges, ), Singapore: World Scientific, 2000, 369-374. Volpe, M. "The Persuasive Force of Humor: Cicero's Defense of Caelius." Quarterly Journal of Speech 63 (1977): 311-323. Welsch, Roger. "Mister, You Got Yourself a Horse": Tales of Old-Time Horse Trading. Lincoln: Univ of Nebraska Press, 1981. Welsch, Roger. Shingling the Fog, and Other Plains Lies. Lincoln: Univ of Nebraska Press, 1972. Williams, Noel. "Problems Defining Contemporary Legends." Perspectives on Contemporary Legend.. Ed. Paul Smith. Sheffield: Univ of Sheffield, 1984. Wonham, Henry B. "In the Name of Wonder: The Emergence of Tall Narrative in American Writing." American Quarterly 41 (1989): 289-307. Wonham, Henry B. Mark Twain and the Art of the Tall Tale. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1993.

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