A few years ago, browsing in a dusty old house
At a bookstore in Maine, I stumbled upon a strange book.
This is a thick, tattered paperback with a title reason for dirty jokes.
I saw the author of it in my 60 s.
The stylish futuristic cover is G. Legman.
Take it off the shelf and even though its page is severely oxidized, I find it contains thousands of porn and scatter jokes that are arranged with the theme "sexual intercourse posture, "Big Inch" and "Zoo ".
These jokes come with Freud.
Style reviews, as well as random animations on life aspects in their 60 s, such as postal codes, hippies, sworn women, and Marshall McLuhan. . . . No doubt "G.
"Legman" is a pseudonym in itself;
The beginning of the two (G-spot? )
And surname (
Not the tits-man? )
Very suspicious.
But a few months later, in the deep winter of 1999, I saw a "self" on the obituary page of The New York Times.
The scholar told a dirty joke. "He has died at the age of 80.
One, in the South of France, volunteered to flee from the United States to France.
The phrase "scholar of dirty jokes" seems to have some sort of antics.
"Is this really an area where scholarships are appropriate or profitable?
Well, jokes, like myths, proverbs, legends, nursery rhymes, riddles, and superstition, do fall within the realm of folklore.
There is a large part of the joke involved in the oral cycle of sex or scattering. (
An analysis of 13,804 New York jokes in 1963 showed that 17% of them were about sex and 11% were about "black. ")
If the history of folklore is as eager as some practitioners insist to be the history of human thought, then someone must engage in the collection and recording of obscene, disgusting, and profane jokes, and print them out.
Although we think this joke is a cultural constant, it is a humorous form that appears and disappears with the rise and fall of civilization.
The joke is different from the story that is just humorous, it reaches its climax in a punch line --
The sudden change of meaning triggered a small explosion of words.
Different from the story, jokes should be short.
As Freud observed, it not only uses a few words, but also expresses what it must say in a few words.
And, of course, there's another type called "shaggy-
In the dog's story, digress and embroidery lead to an almost painful late punch-in line.
But this classic joke started with arrowlike swift, which solved the problem in two formsliner (
Did you hear about the bulldog party?
The cake was made by the girl)or even a one-liner (
I was so ugly when I was born, the doctor slapped my mother).
Usually, it is signaled by a formulaic setting, which in turn could become a meta-joke (
A priest, a rabbi, and a priest walked into a bar.
The bartender said, "What is this joke? ").
* The joke is sometimes thought to have been invented by the Greek legendary hero Palamedes, who defeated auduthews on the eve of the Trojan War.
But since this well-known Smart Guy is also considered to have invented the practice of numbers, the alphabet, lighthouses, dice and regular meals, this claim should perhaps be half-baked.
In Athens, Demosthenes, there is a comedy club called a group of 60 people who meet in the temple of Heracles and exchange Wikipedia, philip of Macedonia is said to have spent a fortune writing down their jokes;
But if it ever existed, its volume was lost.
On the Roman side, Plautus mentioned jestbooks in several of his plays, while Suetonius told us that Emperor Augustus's favorite professor Melissus compiled no less than 150
Still, only one short book has passed down from ancient times: The Phillies, or "laughter"
Lover, a Greek collection, may be a in the fourth or fifth century. D.
It contains 264 projects, several of which appear twice in a slightly different form.
This shows that the book is not a jokebook, but a combination of the two books, a hunch confirmed by two authors Hierocles and philicius, although few co-authors at the time.
Know almost nothing about any one person;
Some scholars have speculated that the Hierocles discussed are the fifth.
The century-old Alexander philosopher of the name was publicly whip flo in Constantine Constantinople for paganism, as observed by a classical, "it may make him taste a bitter acid
"The Philadelphia jokes are superfluous and sharp. (
"How do I cut your hair?
Asked a talkative barber. 'In silence! '")
They accepted a gallery of characters in stock: drunk, miser, bragging, sexual --
A hungry woman, and a man with a bad breath, and a classic type known as scholasti Kos, is translated as "study", "absence"
A professor of thought. " (
"When a big storm exploded, a fool was sailing at sea, causing his slaves to cry in fear.
"Don't Cry," he comforted them, "I have released all of you in my will.
"Now, the jokes of some Phillies are more mysterious than funny, perhaps because of the loss of a low profile.
For example, some jokes about lettuce may make the Roman audience laugh because they believe that lettuce will leave a variety of leaves to promote or hinder sexual function.
Similarly, an intellectual asked his father, how much does a five-year-old ask?
"Ascending bottle holding" may be seen as a double enderre by an ancient audience, as some scholars believe that the word "bottle" in Greece is lekythos, a slang term for "penis" in Aristophanes.
But others, like No. 263 (
Hanging from Plutarch)
, Would not be inappropriate at the Friars Club meeting: "?
Someone sneered and said, "I ate your wife for nothing . "'More fool you.
I'm her husband and I have to have that ugly bitch. You don't. '?
"However, the most memorable joke in Philadelphia is No.
114 regarding the inhabitants of Abdera, a Greek town, his citizens are known for their stupidity: "Seeing a eunuch, An Abderite asks him how many children he has.
The eunuch replied that he did not because he lacked the means to reproduce.
Abderite retorted. . .
"The remaining parts of the surviving text are missing, which shows the strange effect of the unheard-of punch-in line.
* The Philadelphia people were misplaced in the dark and seemed to be the art of jokes.
Complex humor has always existed in the Arab world, where more leisurely folk stories have been cultivated.
During the centuries of Arab conquest, folk stories from Levant have traveled through Spain and Italy, many of which are ironic or pornographic.
For example, an Arab story about a wife who was please by her lover while her cheated husband looked at her ununderstandably in the tree, which was later on the 10 th at Boccaccio
In Europe, this folk story begins to split in two.
On the one hand, with the development of printing and the improvement of reading and writing ability, it has become more and more long, full of chivalrous romance, and finally full of novels.
On the other hand, as the pace of urban life accelerates, its oral form becomes shorter, and as it is condensed into humorous anecdotes, it falls off the details and becomes more formulaic.
In the early Renaissance, the art of jokes was born, and the midwife was a man named Pocho.
* Pooja Blanco (1380-1459)
It is one of the most colorful and versatile Italian humanists.
For more than half a century, he was the secretary of eight popes, and at the age of 50, he gave birth to fourteen children with a mistress.
Five beautiful women aged 18year-
An old bride who gave him six more children.
His career coincided with a turbulent period in the history of the church.
For decades
Known as the long division of the Western divide, there are two or even three competing popes that must bring together the Church Committee to restore unity.
Pocho, a passionate bibli family, profited from this confusion, traveled around Europe looking for lost works of ancient literature.
From the dungeon of the distant medieval monastery, he rescued those precious manuscripts that had rotted into oblivion and painstakingly deciphered and copied them.
Thanks to him, we have "nature" by lucixiu and "Oratoria" by Quintilian, as well as many speeches by Cicero, the architectural works of Vitruvi, and the cooking works of Apicius.
POJO is not only the greatest book
The hunter of his time
He also brandished one of the most evil pens, satirized the bad habits of the clergy, and attacked rival scholars in his Spanish Latin.
"In his attack, he showed such a strong mood that the whole world was afraid of him," commented a contemporary . ".
Pocho, a skilled calligrapher, invented the prototype of the Roman font.
After retiring from Curia, he became prime minister of the Republic of Florence and a biographer of the city.
Of all these achievements, however, Pocho is known for a joke book.
Liber Facetiarum, commonly referred to as Facetiae, is the first book published in Europe.
In this collection of 273 items
Jokes, candy, pun and humorous anecdotes
Arab-
You can see that the Chinese novel in Italy has become a rapid facezia.
Pocho collected some materials while traveling in Europe;
Several of these jokes can be traced back to the stories told by the Baz people in Provence in the 12 th and 13 th centuries.
But most of them came from a joke club called Bugiale in the Vatican.
"Fib factory.
"Here, the pope will come together at the end of the day's tedious work, drafting bulls, pharmacies and oracles, blowing the air and telling shameful stories.
Poggio published his face in 1451, when he was 70 years old.
Soon, the book was read all over Europe.
While many jokes are about sex and make fun of the morality of the priest, the Vatican has not heard any condemnation.
Presumably, since Facetiae is Latin, the clerical classes can taste them without undermining the morals of the masses.
Later commentators, however, were not so broad --minded.
In 1802, Pastor William Sheppard, author of the only English biography of Pocho, expressed his shock, "an apostle secretary who enjoys the friendship and respect of the Pope, there should be stories that irritate the law of decency and make humility blush.
"* A copy of Facetiae is hard won today.
The only thing I can find at the New York University Library is a copy fax for the 1878 Paris edition, the first undeleted French translation of Poggio's book (
Even so, the really bad part is left in Latin).
By reading, I was impressed with the familiarity of the subject.
There are fat jokes, drunk jokes, erection jokes, fart jokes.
A joke about a guy who was tricked into drinking urine won't be out of place in the movie American Pie.
In Facetia XLVII, a husband asks his wife why it is men who pursue women, not the opposite, if men and women get the same pleasure from sex.
"It's obvious," said the wife . "
"We women are always ready to have sex, but you guys don't.
When you are not in the mood, what are the benefits of our asking for your opinion?
"With the banter going on, it's not just a juggling yet, but the exact reversal that appears on American TV shows inhibits your enthusiasm when Cheryl and husband Larry are lying in bed, ask him why she always has to start having sex.
He replied, it's because our men are ready to go.
Just tap my shoulder when you want it!
By modern standards, Facetiae is always too long, and Poggio has a regrettable tendency to step ahead with an explanation, like Facetia XXVI: "Septimo one night, A very obese person is heading to Florence.
On the way, he asked a farmer, "Do you think I can cross the gate ? "?
He is saying whether he can reach the city before the gate is closed.
The farmer joked, 'If a car of hay can pass, you can! '
"At XLIV, a friar against adultery finally declared," This is a hateful sin, and I would rather sleep with ten virgins than with a married woman"
Poggio added, "many people who hear him feel the same way.
"Sometimes you get a moral that replaces the punch line.
In cxxxvii in shave the beard
The woman in the head, who was scolded for not covering her head in public, raised her skirt in order to hide her baldness, thus revealing her back end.
"This is for those who make serious mistakes in order to correct minor mistakes," Poggio told us . ".
Jokes about women tend to revolve around a monotonous theme that all of their illnesses stem from not getting enough sex.
Facetiae is not often fun either, at least when it is abstracted from the atmosphere where Bugiale is probably laughing and printed in cold.
Still, by collecting and publishing it, Poggio set a precedent for a series of later jestbooks, most of which shamelessly plundered his jestbooks.
* William cakeston, England's first book printer, filled his own translation of Aesop with samples of POJO jokes in 1484, thus creating the earliest in English
By the time of Shakespeare, books have become very popular.
"I got my ingenuity from the 'hundred stores'," razor --
Tongued Beatrice declared in "nothing is wrong" that it was a popular collection at the time.
Many of the items in these Tudor and Elizabethan books are without artistic color;
For example, "What is the cleanest leaf among all the other leaves?
It's holly leaves, because no one will wipe their ass with them.
"More people are not jokes at all.
Instead of rushing for success, they simply described some pranks, usually played by the wife against the husband, or showed a moral character. (
The missionaries often add jokes to the sermon to prevent their congregation from falling asleep. )
Another push is needed to finish what Pocho started: turn the humorous story into a joke.
At the beginning of the 17 th century, when-
Probably because of confusion with another classical writer named Hieroclestwenty-
One of his comments on the bidagolas gold was accompanied by jokes from eight Phillies.
The jokes were quickly printed throughout Europe.
Due to the popularity of rediscovered Philogelos jokes, English humor is getting shorter and shorter
That is to say, happier.
This change came in the joke of Joe Miller, the most popular of the new generation of notebooks that began to prosper in the Georgian era. (
Joe Miller, who has the same name, happens to be a famous gloomy London stage dancer;
The collection was compiled by a hacker writer a year after he went to the world, and there is no doubt that his title is a joke. )
It was originally published in 1739 and went through so many versions that "Joe Miller" became an outdated joke.
The original version of Joe Miller's joke contains jokes about Irish broken logic and bad breath (
"A lady was asked how much she liked a gentleman's song and she said that the gentleman's tone was very smelly and the words were good but the air was unbearable ")
For bawdy's performance on the word "cock" and ribaldry, Loose Women were sacrificed (
"A gentleman talks about a young girl who often walks around the temple, and if there is as much law in her head as in her tail, she will be one of the most capable lawyers in the UK ").
However, the bluer material did not survive the subsequent wave of English pladelliSaxon culture.
At the beginning of the 19 th century, when Thomas bowler removed the unrefined parts from Shakespeare's works, the notebook was also cleaned up.
Almost no one at Poggio can get into the humor magazine column like Punch.
But this dirty joke continues to exist in the oral culture until Gershon Legman in the 1960 s is reprinted with its obnoxious splendor.
* I noticed in the shabby copy of the basic principles of dirty jokes that Legman dedicated the book to Manes [shade]
Bracciolini of the hill, books of lovers, folklore
Humor and women.
"Does he have a deep feeling for this naughty Italian humanist?
When I mentioned Legman's name in the New York literary world, the person who knew him --
He seems to have left a cult following.
I will tell me the weirdest thing: he created the slogan in his 60 s, making love, not war;
He had an affair with anais Nin and asked her to help write the $a-
Order page porn for a wealthy "collector" of Homer;
He was behind the invention of vibrato dildo;
He introduced origami into the West;
He was an editor of the magazine "eccentric psychoanalysis.
He left the United States to escape the persecution of the government and took refuge in a small town in the French Riviera, where he lived with one hand --to-
There is a mouth in a shabby castle that once belonged to the Templar.
Most of the facts in the investigation proved to be at least partially true. (
We have to accept Legman's own claims about dildo and sex rather than war, which he claims was created in a speech at Ohio University in 1963. )
Legman was born in 1917 in a Jewish family in the coal township of Pennsylvania.
He started collecting jokes very early, cutting them off the magazine and filing them on the subject.
After graduating from high school, he went to New York, where he taught himself several languages;
He says his university is the New York Public Library.
At the age of twenty
Third, he published his first book, Oragenitalism, under the pen name Roger.
Glège (Maxe de la glannège)
His name is George Alexander leigman).
Its subtitle is the Encyclopedia of oral technology in genital excitement, Part 1, cunincinctus. " (
He later explained that he lacked the courage to do research for oral sex. )
At that time, writing a paper on oral sex was considered as dangerous as political incitement.
When his publisher's office was searched, he fled the state briefly.
After returning to New York, he worked in pornography.
Sexologist Alfred Kinsey's book "hunter" lives on the edge of the city's literary world, where obscene works --
Vendors are sometimes no different from avant-garde.
Publishers of Joyce, Lawrence and Henry Miller.
However, Letterman is more of a moralist than a porn writer.
He wrote "Love and Death" in the late 1940 s, a heated argument that violence is a real porn.
He asked, why should children be exposed to ruthless descriptions of violence but not affected by sex?
"At least sex is normal," he wrote . ""Is murder?
Legman published the book himself and mailed it to customers from his three books
Guest room cottage in Bronx area.
Although "Love and Death" is a long story about the censorship system, rather than a porn film, the US postal authorities accuse its author --
The publisher who sent "indecent, vulgar and obscene material" by mail and cut off his delivery.
He left France with his wife because of disgust.
They bought a small piece of land in Riviera with an olive grove and an old building (
This is indeed at the site of the Templar Castle)
This became the warehouse where he collected a great deal of rare books, as well as an index card filled with fritters, jokes and what he called the "pissoir warning sentence.
"Legman is a handsome height 5 feet 9 inch (
According to his FBI profile)
Thick dark hair, blue eyes and strong nose.
He was usually dressed in shabby clothes and tied a rope because of long-term poverty.
Friends say that he is grumpy and difficult to get along with, but he is very happy to be together.
The scholar was delayed by this kind of self-scholar from the dark demimonde, and his rambling prose was filled with the marginal jeremich.
Legman, however, dismisses folklore with a PhD, calling it "Phudniks" and "cacademics ".
However, by providing them with materials that academic journals did not dare to publish for free, he helped to establish pornographic folklore as a respectable topic for academic research.
If you 've heard Jim Holt's stop me: The History and Philosophy of jokes, reprinted from stop me. Copyright (c)
Jim Holt 2008
With the permission of the publisher, W. W.
Norton Company Limited