In Memoriam: Alan Dundes 1934-2005

Alan Dundes was the most renowned folklorist of his time. A fast reader and a prolific author, he published over thirty books (single-authored, co-authored, and edited) and reportedly over 250 articles. Moreover, his scholarly range was broad, touching upon nearly every aspect of folklore studies. His influence on the profession has also been great, and his publications frequently cited. As a scholar and as a person he could generate strong feelings—mostly affection, but also exasperation and sometimes indignation. His admirers honored him with at least three festschrifts, one from psychoanalytic scholars, a second from proverb scholars, and a third from former students.¹ Among other notable honors were a second place in the Chicago Folklore Prize Competition of 1962 for his book The Morphology of North American Indian Folktales and first place in 1976 for La Terra in Piazza (with Alessandro Falassi);² the Pitrè Prize (Sigillo d'Oro), which he was awarded in 1993, acknowledged his lifetime achievement in folklore studies. During much of his career Alan Dundes was doubtless the folklore scholar best-known both to fellow folklorists and to non-folklorists the world over. Indeed, his stature has been such that he long ago joined the ranks of folklorists who have inspired folklore about themselves.³ His death at the age of seventy was widely reported in substantial obituaries in major newspapers. He was, in short, an academic celebrity.

Alan Dundes was born on 8 September 1934 in New York City. His father Maurice was an attorney; his mother Helen, a musician.⁴ When Alan was an infant, the family moved to a one-time farm outside of Patterson, a small town north of Manhattan, and it was there that he grew up. As a child Alan was already a voracious reader: his parents encouraged this pastime, giving him a dollar for every hundred books he read. He also explored music and in time became an accomplished clarinetist. Indeed, he spent his initial years at Yale studying music, but in his third year he changed his major to English literature, earning his B.A. in 1955. He spent the next two years in the United States Naval Reserve, assigned to an oil tanker based in Italy: his first encounter with Europe. Alan returned to Yale, where in the course of 1957–1958 he met his future wife Carolyn Browne, a graduate student in the Yale Drama School; completed his M.A.T. in English; and discovered the academic field of folklore. After he and Carolyn wed, they lived for a year in France, where Alan taught conversational English, and then settled in Bloomington, Indiana. In 1962, after only three years of study, he earned his doctorate in folklore at Indiana University.

Alan's first job was as an instructor of English at the University of Kansas, but within a year he was hired by the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, where he rose quickly through the ranks, becoming within five years Professor of Anthropology and Folklore. At Berkeley Alan was instrumental in establishing the M.A. Program in Folklore as well as the Folklore Archives. He remained at Berkeley for the duration of his academic career, which came to an end on 30 March 2005, when he collapsed while teaching a seminar. He is survived by his sister Marna, his wife Carolyn, his daughters Alison and Lauren, his son David, and six grandchildren.

Structuralism and psychoanalytic theory were the great tools of Alan's research.⁵ He began publishing while still a graduate student, and these two theoretical approaches were present in his work virtually from the beginning. Representative of structural analysis are his first book, The Morphology of North American Indian Folktales (1964a), which was a revision of his doctoral dissertation, and his article "On the Structure of the Proverb" (1975). Psychoanalytic interpretation appears already in two of his earliest essays—"Earth-Diver: Creation of the Mythopoeic Male" (1962a) and "On the Psychology of Collecting Folklore" (1962b)—and it came to dominate his work.⁶ For the most part professional folklorists did not embrace his Freudianism, although they...