Humorous oral narratives. The narrative joke—also called the jocular folktale, humorous
folktale, humorous anecdote, merry tale, farcical tale, jest, and Schwank—is simple in
form, earthy in content, ancient in origin, ubiquitous in distribution, and endless in
variety. Varieties of narrative jokes include tall tales, catch tales, humorous animal tales,
jokes about married couples, jokes about drunks and lazy people, stories about the wise
and the foolish, jokes about the clergy and religious figures, jokes about professional or
occupational groups, and jokes about contemporary pastimes.
The catch tale or hoax story, such as “The Golden Arm” (Type 366, “The Man from
the Gallows”), generally is told as a true story, but it ends abruptly and humorously by
tricking the audience with a punch line or by forcing a listener to ask the storyteller a
question that elicits a foolish answer. Many kinds of jokes are swapped within joking
sessions; however, the catch tale is most effective when it appears spontaneously in a
nonjoking context—that is, within the framework of ordinary conversation. The shaggydog story—“a nonsensical joke that employs in the punch line a psychological non
sequitur, a punning variation of a familiar saying, or a hoax to trick the listener who
expects conventional wit or humor” (Brunvand 1963:44)—is an example of the catch tale
since it tricks the audience.
Droll folktales in which animals talk and behave like human beings are historically
and geographically widespread and survive as children’s entertainment in storybooks and
cartoons, but in the contemporary oral tradition animal tales generally take the form of
off-color jokes rather than children’s tales. Stock characters from ancient Indo-European
folklore, such as the parrot, and favorite themes of international folktales, such as the
Trickster animal, also persist in oral jokes. Breaking a taboo is a common theme in some
modern animal jokes, and animals often do things in jokelore that people refrain from
doing. American males often project in the behavior of animals deepseated fears of
castration, quick orgasms, disparity in the size of male and female organs, and insatiable
females.
Jokes about married couples deal with seduction and adultery; competition between
husband and wife; sexual anxieties; sexually unresponsive husbands and wives; wives
outwitting their husbands; retorts between husband and wife; wives who withhold
intercourse from their husbands to get their way; and the unfaithful, vain, obstinate,
mean, or lazy wife. A classical tale of married couples still found in North American oral
tradition is “The Taming of the Shrew” (type 901), which, in a joke called “That’s
Once!” has been reported in well over 300 versions from around twenty-five countries
and goes back to at least the Middle Ages.
Stories about the foolish collected in North America sometimes are general numskull
tales dealing with absurd ignorance or absurd misunderstandings and are not about any
particular place or group; however, more often these tales attribute absurd ignorance or
other unfavorable qualities to some specific ethnic or regional group. Such tales are
popular nearly everywhere. In England numskull tales are told about the Wise Men of Gotham; in Denmark, about the Fools of Molbo; and in Germany, about the Citizens of
Schilda. In North America, the same or very similar numskull jokes may also be told
about Little Morons, Irishmen, Blacks, Poles, Jews, Italians, Puerto Ricans, or any ethnic,
racial, religious, or regional group. Although many of the numskull tales collected in
North America are reworkings of older material, settlement history and location help
determine the butt of these tales. For example, absurd ignorance is attributed to
Kentuckians in Indiana, Buckeyes or Hoosiers in Kentucky, Aggies (students at Texas
A&M University) or Mexicans in lexas, Okies in California, Cajuns in Louisiana, and
Newfies in Canada.
In the North American oral tradition, humorous tales of the wise are not as popular as
tales of the foolish, though they were common in medieval exempla, Renaissance
jestbooks, and Oriental literary collections. Oral humorous tales of the wise often are
brief narratives about local characters. Although these anecdotes frequently are attached
to real people and have realistic settings, diey are versions of common traditional tales
told in other locations about other characters. As a character type in rural areas, the
farmer sometimes is portrayed as a clever deceiver; however, the folk don’t always
distinguish clearly between the wise and the foolish, for in folklore the Trickster
sometimes is a clever deceiver and other times is a numskull. In modern jokes, the
Trickster often does things that most people refrain from doing. These tales frequently
serve a cathartic function, providing a socially approved outlet for social repressions.
In contemporary jokes, drunkenness and laziness often are attributed to ethnic,
minority groups—drunkenness to Irishmen and laziness to Blacks, for example; however,
often these negative traits are not attributed to any particular group. Most jokes about
drunks incorporate motifs of absurd misunderstandings: Similar sounding words are
mistaken for each other, or one thing is mistaken for another. Apparently, attributing
ignorance to drunks is a way of rationalizing foolish behavior. Humorous tales dealing
with extreme laziness are widespread and extremely old—popular themes in literary
collections of jokes.
Although religious jokes are popular in North American oral tradition, they are by no
means a modern invention. In medieval satire, hypocritical and lecherous priests, monks,
and friars were stock characters. In the late 20th century, priests and nuns who fail to
uphold their vows of poverty, obedience, and chastity remain the butt of similar jokes.
With the advent of Protestantism in Europe, the preacher assumed the role of the amorous
priest in humorous folktales. Modern North American humorous tales still deal with the
preacher’s lust for women, but they also deal with his desire for worldly pleasures,
including money, liquor, and fried chicken. Likewise, widespread stereotypic traits
attributed to Jews—for example, a preoccupation with money, business, professionalism
and pro-Semiticism—are found in modern jokes about rabbis and Jews.
In the 1970s, a whole cycle of sick-Jesus jokes developed, mosdy in the form of short
riddle jokes. Some longer religious narrative jokes about Jesus are varieties of the modern
sick joke, which is faddish and sometimes topical. People who appreciate religious jokes
are not necessarily agnostics and atheists. On the contrary, they may be religious people
who tell tales about God or Jesus to relieve them of the pressure of a too ideal model.
Jokes about professional and occupational groups reflect an age-old tendency of the
folk to mock certain trades and professions. Lawyers and physicians, as well as
clergymen, have been the subject of satirical folk humor since the Middle Ages and continue to be popular figures in contemporary jokelore. A very general motif in some
tales about physicians is “Repartee concernmg doctors and patients”; however, many of
the jokes about physicians also are forms of contemporary sick humor, and some follow
the good news—bad news format.
The female schoolteacher in North American jokelore is a symbol of female
dominance as well as a model of moral authority. A dominant figure in the classroom, the
schoolmarm is envisioned by schoolboys as also a dominant figure in the bedroom. In
schoolboy fantasy, as reflected in jokes, the schoolmarm is the subject of sexual desire
and conquest, frequently by a stock character, Little Johnny. More precocious than his
schoolmates, Johnny possesses sexual knowledge far beyond what is normal for his age.
Sometimes he speaks profanely in inappropriate contexts, but the humor in most of the
jokes is based on punning or other wordplay, such as trick names. Usually learned and
recited in adolescence, jokes about schoolteachers serve important psychological
functions for young males. For instance, they reduce their fear about sex since Johnny
always gets the best of a woman considered sexually dominant. Jokes about female
schoolteachers also reduce adolescent male hostilities toward the oppressive moral
authority of adults since an authority figure, the schoolmarm, is presented as not so very
moral.
Other authority figures mocked in jokes are politicians. In political humor, no political
party or figure is safe. The folk tell jokes, usually topical, about Republicans and
Democrats, about Richard Nixon and John F.Kennedy, about George Wallace and Jesse
Jackson, about Dan Quayle and Ross Perot, and about Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton.
Generally, as a class, politicians are distrusted in contemporary jokelore.
Many North American jokes, then, concern sex, ethnicity, religion, and politics and
tend to reveal threats, concerns, and anxieties of those who pass them along. North
Americans are competitive in play as well as in work, and jokes about contemporary
pastimes constitute another class of contemporary jokelore. Humorous tales about
golfers, for example, are common and offer relief from pressures brought about by
competition on the golf course. There are jokes about novice golfers, women golfers, and
golf widows as well as jokes about clerics and religious figures on the golf course,
numskulls on the golf course, and frustrations on the golf course. There are even shaggydog tales about golf. Jokes about the callous golfer who thinks only of his game are
especially popular.
Many narrative jokes told in North America are familiar forms of international
humorous folktales, though here they are modified by time, locale, folk tradition, and the
individual joke tellers. Jokes about the traveling salesman and the farmer’s daughter, for
example, are contemporary descendants of old pastourelles that dealt with the seduction
of a shepherdess by a roving knight. The traveling salesman is but a contemporary name
for the potential interloper, a threat to conjugal rights.
What’s more, the influence of popular culture on modern jokelore gives a certain
uniformity to the form, content, and theme of humorous folktales throughout North
American oral tradition. North Americans live in the midst of a prevailing popular culture
spread by the mass media, which influences jokes, just as, more generally, popular
culture nourishes, and is nourished by, the folklore. The influence of popular culture on
joke telling is not a recent development, though, as formerly jokes were preserved in
jestbooks and chapbooks. In the late 20th century, electronic media, including e-mail, as well as an expanded print media spread a much larger variety of jokes, including bawdy
material once taboo in mainstream popular culture but fairly common now on the Internet
and in popular collections of humor and slick magazines that are readily available in
drugstores, supermarkets, and shopping-mall bookstores.
Though all kinds of jokes have been assimilated into popular culture, the narrative
joke remains one of the most collectible forms of folk literature in North America. Jokes
remain popular because they touch on every aspect of human life, may pop up
spontaneously at any time in almost any social context, and are short, thus fitting very
well into the fast pace of contemporary urban folklife.
Ronald L.Baker
References
Baker, Ronald L. 1986. Jokelore: Humorous Folktales from Indiana. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press.
Brunvand, Jan Harold. 1963. A Classification for Shaggy Dog Stories. Journal ofAmerican
Folklore 76:42–68.
Hoffmann, Frank. 1973. An Analytical Survey of Anglo-American Traditional Erotica. Bowling
Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press.
Leary, James P. 1991. Midwestern Folk Humor. Little Rock, AR: August House.
Legman, G. 1968. No Laughing Matter: An Analysis of Sexual Humor. 2 vols. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press.
Randolph, Vance. 1976. Pissing in the Snow and Other Ozark Folktales. Urbana: University of
Illinois Press.