Afbeelding van de auteur.

Gershon Legman (1917–1999)

Auteur van The Limerick

27+ Werken 1,033 Leden 15 Besprekingen Favoriet van 2 leden

Over de Auteur

Fotografie: photo from The Union Recorder, 1970

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Werken van Gershon Legman

The Limerick (1953) — Redacteur — 530 exemplaren
More Limericks (1976) 98 exemplaren
Oragenitalism (1969) 32 exemplaren
The Guilt of the Templars (1966) 22 exemplaren
The Limerick, Volume 2 (1976) 17 exemplaren
The Limerick, Volume 1 (1976) 16 exemplaren
The Art of Mahlon Blaine (1982) 11 exemplaren
Neurotica — Redacteur — 3 exemplaren
Mooncalf (2017) 2 exemplaren
World I Never Made (2017) 2 exemplaren
Chansons de salle de garde (1972) 2 exemplaren
Musick to My Sorrow (2018) 1 exemplaar

Gerelateerde werken

My Secret Life (abridged edition in one volume) (1888) — Introductie, sommige edities291 exemplaren
Arguing Comics: Literary Masters on a Popular Medium (1656) — Medewerker — 71 exemplaren
Erotische sprookjes uit Rusland (1966) — Introductie, sommige edities63 exemplaren
My Secret Life (1966) — Editor/Introduction, sommige edities60 exemplaren
The Best of Maledicta (1987) — Medewerker — 39 exemplaren
The Language and Sexuality Reader (2006) — Medewerker — 12 exemplaren
The Mammoth Cod, and Address to the Stomach Club (1976) — Introductie — 5 exemplaren
My Secret Life, Volumes I - VI (1966) — Redacteur, sommige edities4 exemplaren
American Aphrodite (Volume Three, Number Nine) (1953) — Medewerker — 2 exemplaren
Bibliography of Prohibited Books, Vols. 1-3 (1962) — Introductie, sommige edities1 exemplaar

Tagged

Algemene kennis

Gangbare naam
Legman, G.
Pseudoniemen en naamsvarianten
Legman, Gershon
Legman, George
Geboortedatum
1917-11-02
Overlijdensdatum
1999-02-23
Geslacht
male
Nationaliteit
USA
Land (voor op de kaart)
USA
Geboorteplaats
Scranton, Pennsylvania, USA
Plaats van overlijden
Opio, France
Woonplaatsen
Scranton, Pennsylvania, USA
La Jolla, California, USA
Valbonne, France
Organisaties
University of California, San Diego (writer in residence, 1964-1965)
Korte biografie
Gershon Legman (1917-1999) was an American cultural critic and folklorist, best known for his books The Rationale of the Dirty Joke (1968) and The Horn Book: Studies in Erotic Folklore and Bibliography (1964).

Born in 1917 in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Legman was the son of Emil and Julia Friedman Legman, both of Hungarian-Jewish descent. He was educated at Scranton's Central High School, where journalist Jane Jacobs and screenwriter and film director Cy Endfield were classmates. He enrolled in the University of Michigan for one semester in the fall of 1935, but left without sitting for his exams. He then settled in New York City where for a number of years he was a part-time freelance assistant to the physician and sexological researcher Robert Latou Dickinson at the New York Academy of Medicine while simultaneously working in the bookshop of Jacob Brussel, where a brisk business was done in publishing and selling contraband erotica. He also spent long hours at the New York Public Library acquiring an autodidactic education. In the late 1940s he became the editor of the little magazine Neurotica.

Throughout his career Legman was an independent scholar without institutional affiliation, except for one year during 1964-1965 when he was a writer in residence at the University of California, San Diego, in the first year of the new campus' undergraduate programs. He pioneered the serious academic study of erotic and taboo materials in folklore.

(source: Wikipedia)

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What a vile, depraved, offensive, WONDERFUL volume. Gershon Legman was a fascinating and eccentric individual of the 20th century, obsessed with sex but also determined to bring America out of its needlessly repressed ways. (And also apparently a key contributor in bringing the origami fad to the Western world... Go figure.) This book was famously published in France rather than the US when Legman couldn't find a publisher, and because of this, he found himself without any copyright over the volume.

There are many variations on this publication, as a result, but my Panther edition collects 1700 limericks in two volumes. The first volume includes a decent introductory essay on the history of the poetic form, and the second volume contains a short "rhyming dictionary" at the end. Both volumes give extensive (and often dirty) notes on the limericks.

Every possible topic is covered - from incest and coprophilia to necrophilia and prostitution. If you're in any way offended by things, this may not be for you, and truthfully I hope no-one is completely comfortable with all 1700 poems herein! But the importance of Legman's work was just as much to challenge our assumptions, to make us - and particularly Americans - aware that their society's repression wasn't necessarily natural, that the "dirtiness" of 5-line poems was a completely legitimate way of enjoying oneself. Most interestingly in his inroduction, Legman comments that limericks are much more popular amongst the highly-educated. He suggests that the ornate fringes of the poetry, the inter-rhymes, the deceptively innocent opening lines, they all attract people more subtly attuned to the nuances of the joke, while the slight pretention makes them less attractive to people for whom dirty jokes alone are attractive. I think there's also the fact that, because limericks can be so depraved, they require a mind who can enjoy the joke without necessarily endorsing the sentiment in real life. If this cheeky volume is evidence, it's well worth it.
… (meer)
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therebelprince | 8 andere besprekingen | Oct 24, 2023 |
 
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Rockyherc | 1 andere bespreking | Feb 25, 2022 |
This was frankly a bit of a slog, more so than the first volume, possibly due to sheer quantity.

In the introduction to his version of the song ‘Clementine’, Tom Lehrer posits that ‘the reason most folk songs are so atrocious is that they were written by the people’, and I suspect much the same applies to limericks. While there are a few gems where the writing shines and you actually laugh out loud, they are swamped by a lot of dross.

The problem is not that the limericks are crude – many would argue that that’s entirely the point of limericks – but rather that so many of them are only crude: if the use of a taboo word or the description of a taboo practice is in itself enough to tickle your ribs, then you’re in luck, but a reader of any sophistication might hope and expect to get actual humour: jokes and linguistic play to give the verses some heft. And that’s the extra layer that professional wordsmiths can add to comic verse: they first have an ear for the meter, knowing whether the rhythm works and having the skill to rework a line that doesn’t until it does. Then they also have a sense of comic timing, knowing which line(s) to put the set-up in and where to deliver the punchline for best effect.

I think taboo language is like seasoning: it can add piquancy to a bland meal if applied by someone with the necessary experience, but it carries little nutrition and you wouldn’t want to eat it on its own.
… (meer)
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dtw42 | May 15, 2018 |

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Statistieken

Werken
27
Ook door
10
Leden
1,033
Populariteit
#24,928
Waardering
½ 3.7
Besprekingen
15
ISBNs
35
Favoriet
2

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