Abstract
READERS TURNING TO THESE PAGES expecting to find a collection of Alan Dundes tall tales, tall Alan Dundes tales, or an analytical essay pinning the tale on Alan Dundes are encouraged to review again the subtitle. While I have no doubt that the niagara of Alan Dundes lore currently washing over American academe will one day command formal attention at some of our learned forums, perhaps when Dundes himself finally is elevated to myth, my purpose here is to present a more circumspect and generalized overview of the folklore of folklorists. As a further introductory note, I should add that the ethnographic data and observations presently to follow were informally collected over the past several years from colleagues and friends in the American Folklore Society and in many cases discussed with them. To these individuals I extend my thanks.' Not even the title of this article is mine but was suggested by several folklore graduate students from the University of Pennsylvania following an extended discussion on the topic at the 1972 American Folklore Society annual meeting in Austin, Texas. Folklorists, like social scientists, habitually have sought out groups furthest from themselves for subject matter and data upon which to build theoretical speculations. For the most part, they have concentrated on the peasantry, nonliterate societies, immigrants, mountaineers, rural whites and blacks, the poor, lower classes, and so on, while they themselves have tended to be middle or upper class in their socioeconomic origins, urban-based, well educated, and prone to cluster in social networks until recently very far removed from those they
Published Version
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