Single-episode, believed folk narrative, especially one centering on a particular
individual. The word originally meant “things unpublished or secret” and referred to the
actions and sayings of famous people that were not included in their official biographies.
Anecdotes often focus on things said in a particularly witty or effective way, such as the
line attributed to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill when told by a female
member of Parliament that, if he were her husband, she would poison his tea. “Madam,”
he is said to have answered, “if I were your husband I would drink it.” As this example
illustrates, anecdotes are typically humorous, but they should be distinguished from
jokes, which are understood to be fictive by their tellers and hearers. In effect, anecdotes
are to legends as jokes are to folktales, shortened or crystallized equivalents; unlike many
legends, however, they do not involve the supernatural.
The folk anecdote has parallels in the written literary tradition that go back at least to
the great 14th-century English anthology of illustrative stories of the Roman emperors,
called the Gesta Romanorum, which was printed in Latin. Such “ana,” or published
collections of anecdotes, grew to great popularity in 17th- and 18th-century Europe,
where they focused primarily on famous living personalities rather than historical ones.
The usual subject matter of serious anecdotal narratives, whether folk or published, is
revealed in the headings Stith Thompson’s Motif Index of Folk-Literature (1955–1958)
gives for the genre—social types and relationships, wise and unwise conduct, and
rewards and punishments. The subject matter of humorous anecdotes includes such things
as great lies, ludicrous mistakes, escapes, exaggerations, tricks, practical jokes, and
especially the well-put or stinging verbal comebacks of clever people.
While anecdotes often concern famous individuals—generals, politicians, kings,
actors, and the like—some ordinary individuals gain folk fame based solely on their
sayings and deeds that generate anecdotes among their group. The exploits of one Charlie
Ferg, for example, which constitute a local genre of folklore in southwest Wisconsin’s
Ocooch Mountains, are basically a set of this ne’er-do-well’s one-line responses to
judgments against him by community moralists. In one narrative, Charlie stumbled by a
group of church members on his way home from a tavern one night, and a deacon asked
him if he had found Jesus. “Why no, Deacon,” he replied, “I didn’t know he was lost!”
Besides their entertainment value, both folk and literary anecdotes of this type often
serve moral purposes as well, as the following narrative about Thomas Jefferson shows.
It was collected by Works Progress Administration (WPA) workers in Virginia in the
1930s: “Jefferson with one of his friends was in a town near Washington while he was
president and met an old colored an’ weather-beaten slave, who bowed nearly to his
knees to him. The President in turn bowed to him and spoke kindly to him and drew him
into conversation. He saw that the military officer with him did not like the idea of his
talking to the old negro so kindly, so he said ‘Shame on you my man, I would not want
an aged slave to have more manners than I. And furthermore, he was more polite to me
than you are to disapprove of my behavior.’” Testimony to the folk nature of this anecdote is the fact that it is printed in Booker T.Washington’s Up from Slavery
attributed to George Washington and in Benjamin A.Botkin’s Treasury of Southern
Folklore (1949) attributed to Robert E.Lee. While, as this indicates, anecdotal narratives
do float, they tend to attach themselves to individuals of similar characteristics, such as
the “great gentlemen” named above, or to men such as Albert Einstein and Bertrand
Russell as representing the type of “the genius.” Both men are said to have been
approached by beautiful women to have sex with them—to bear a child with “my body
and your brains.” Each man is said to have replied, “What if [it] turns out the other way
around?”
There are vast numbers of folk, popular, and literary anecdotes in circulation. Perhaps
the anecdote is such an active genre of narrative in American society because of its
brevity and focus on individual personality, both of which are amenable features to
contemporary culture.
Thomas E.Barden
References
Barden, Thomas E., ed. 1991. Virginia Folk Legends. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.
Botkin, Benjamin A., ed. 1949. Treasury of Southern Folklore. New York: Crown.
Leary, James, ed. 1991. Midwestern Folk Humor. Litde Rock, AR: August House.