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E-book
Author Davis, Susan G., 1953- author.

Title Dirty jokes and bawdy songs : the uncensored life of Gershon Legman / Susan G. Davis
Published [Urbana] : University of Illinois Press, [2019]

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Description 1 online resource
Series Folklore studies in a multicultural world
Folklore studies in a multicultural world.
Contents The stranger -- Sex researcher -- Kinsey's bibliographer -- Love & death -- Neurotica -- Advanced studies in folklore -- "The ballad" and The horn book -- The key to the fields -- The hell drawer -- Under Mt. Cheiron
Summary "Collector of sexual folklore. Cataloger of erotica. Tireless social critic. Gershon Legman's singular, disreputable resume made him a counter-cultural touchstone during his forty-year exile in France. Despite his obscurity today, Legman's prescient work and passion for the prurient laid the groundwork for our contemporary study of the forbidden. Susan G. Davis follows the life and times of the figure driven to share what he found in civilization's secret libraries. Self-taught and fiercely unaffiliated, Legman collected the risque on street corners and in theaters and dug it out of little-known archives. If the sexual humor he uncovered often used laughter to disguise hostility and fear, he still believed it indispensable to the human experience. Davis reveals Legman in all his prickly, provocative complexity as an outrageous nonconformist thundering at a wrong-headed world while reveling in conflict, violating laws and boundaries with equal abandon, and pursuing love and improbable adventures. Through it all, he maintained a kaleidoscopic network of friends, fellow intellectuals, celebrity admirers, and like-minded obsessives"-- Provided by publisher
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Print version record
Subject Legman, G. (Gershon), 1917-1999.
SUBJECT Legman, G. (Gershon), 1917-1999 fast
Subject Folklorists -- United States -- Biography
Sex -- Folklore -- Research -- History -- 20th century
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY -- General.
Folklorists
United States
Genre/Form Biographies
History
Biographies.
Biographies.
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780252051456
0252051459