Folklore about folklore, a word coined by Alan Dundes on the analogy of the term
“metalanguage,” or linguistic statements about language. Dundes suggested that
metafolklore and “oral literary criticism” (informants’ commentary upon their own
folklore) offer ways to elicit the meanings of folklore items directly from the folk
themselves.
Metafolklore may occur within one genre—for example, a proverb about proverbs or a
joke about joke telling—or it may cross genre lines, as in the following example of a
metafolkloristic joke that alludes both to the “knock, knock” joke cycle and to a familiar
proverb:
Knock
Who’s there?
Opportunity. (The proverb is “Opportunity knocks
but once.)
Another American metafolkloristic joke parodies the traditional traveling-salesman story
in which the salesman is usually invited to sleep with the farmer’s daughter. In this
variation, he is told instead to sleep with the farmer’s son, to which the salesman
responds, “Oh my God, I must be in the wrong joke.” The punch line both comments on
the nature of the traveling-salesman joke cycle and draws attention to the theme of
homosexuality rather than heterosexuality in this variation.
Jan Harold Brunvand
References
Dundes, Alan. 1966. Metafolklore and Oral Literary Criticism. The Monist 50(4). Reprinted in
Readings in American Folklore, ed. Jan Harold Brunvand. New York: W.W.Norton, 1979, pp.
404–415.