A Classification for Shaggy Dog Stories

Abstract

THE FOLLOWING TYPE INDEX for stories was begun as a classification job in Indiana University Folklore Archives while I was archivist from September I958 to June I96o. Although approximately 300 Indiana University texts constitute largest single collection represented, they make up only about half of all jokes that were finally indexed. After hearing by chance about a large collection of stories preserved by Columbia Broadcasting System from a I958 radio contest,l I decided to expand project and also include analogous materials from print. Bibliography of Texts shows wide range of publications that was sampled; some references came from folklore journals and anthologies, but many were from miscellaneous popular works. A survey of a dozen years of monthly joke page in Boys' Life yielded some three dozen stories. A series of articles in Esquire in I937 and I942 contained twenty examples. From many joke books available, those of Bennett Cerf were selected and found to be rich in dogs; one pocket-sized anthology of shaggies from England was also found. Two collections of stories used in advertising were indexed, and miscellaneous personal reading, plus jokes heard during course of project, provided further scattered references. Altogether, finished classification includes more than 200 types and subtypes of stories, which are organized in six sections. sections are lettered and individual stories are numbered after manner of Stith Thompson's Motif-Index of Folk Literature so that new material can be added any place. Numbers have been skipped frequently to facilitate additions. A joke from one printed work and not attested from oral sources was included only if it constituted a subtype of a known folk joke or was similar to other oral material. As original basis for selecting jokes, it was assumed that they were ridiculous in setting, long and drawn-out in style, and likely to be followed by more groans than laughs. A detailed definition of story emerged after excerpting such jokes from archives (along with all stories labeled by collectors or informants as shaggy dogs), examining jokes designated as dogs in printed collections, and then working out a system to classify them all. Therefore, a survey of sections of classification must precede a formal definition of genre. Section A of index, The 'Original' Shaggy Dog Story, is a concession to widely held idea that first such joke must have been about a that was shaggy.2 It is fruitless to inquire whether any given joke was forerunner of all current stories, but probably some form of joke in Section A gave us their popular name. use of term shaggy dog has been extended to cover three main groups of jokes. first two sections of index constitute one such group, for principle behind jokes in Section A is exactly same as in B, what Eric Partridge has called the psychological non sequitur.3 Partridge's term admirably describes The Ordinary Shaggy Dog Story. He