cogito, ergo sum
(I think, therefore I am. René Descartes, Discourse on the Method, 1637)
If Alan Dundes's claim—that scholars are divided into those who prefer articles and those who prefer books—is true (see "The Kushmaker" and Other Essays on Folk Speech and Folk Humor), it could be argued that Elliott Oring tends to fit into the latter category (while Dundes identifies with the first one). The Consolations of Humor is not only his seventh book, not including books he edited, it also follows a clear writing rationale and coherent structure. It opens with a discussion of specific repertoires of anecdotes and jokes that points out the partiality and arbitrariness of the interpretations offered to them (the first chapters mainly include demythization of the religious joke, the Jewish and any other ethnic joke, and the sexual joke). What follows is an attempt to apply common paradigms in humor research to reading a variety of humorous texts (with a reflective examination of the mechanism of "appropriate incongruity" and the "Semantic Script Theory of Humor"), and additional attempts to apply contemporary paradigms in folkloristics to the study of fairy tales, legends, ballads, and more (including "memetics" but also "cultural epidemiology," functionalism, performance, etc.)—all characterized by consistent skepticism and rare honesty, yielding significant and surprising insights about the ethnographic and folkloristic field.
The result, reflected throughout the book but especially in its final chapter ("To Explain Tradition"), includes complex and precise definitions of key concepts in folkloristics (from humorous incongruity, through change in all its forms and manifestations, to tradition and more), and what can be called "a late (reflective) return" (my term) to a "science of tradition" (Oring's term). Oring himself is skeptical about the word "science" and rejects what he calls "over-biologizing" analogies (see, for example, page 120). But he does not give up on what he calls "the big questions" that should occupy scholars, nor on the comprehensive (even if over time and through collaboration between researchers) and systematic nature of the discipline, and especially on evidence-based explanations. He insists that such explanations should replace biased and hermetically sealed interpretations that cannot be verified or argued with. Oring emphasizes all through the book that he has no specific scientific agenda and no preference for one coherent and exclusive theory, but he certainly feels the absence of scientific values, such as commitment to empirical truth, even if temporary or partial, or a more comprehensive theory that goes beyond the scope of “microscopic" case studies. This non-romantic "return" mainly combines the theoretical perspectives of the comparative, structuralist, ethnopoetic, and especially contextual schools, and is characterized by a circular rather than linear movement–of returning to fundamental questions, concepts, and structures and their examination in light of new case studies. Perhaps this spiral pattern is what distinguishes a book from an article, because it gives its author an opportunity to answer the questions and comments that his articles provoked, and to add new participants to this conversation.
Faithful to these principles, Oring brings in the afterword an interesting example of the social and political importance of responsible folkloristic reading which is not necessarily "politically correct." According to him, this example proves that the common tendency to attribute sexual intention to sexual jokes, usually chauvinistic and offensive, does not stand up to folkloristic scrutiny (like the tendency to attribute racist intentions to ethnic jokes or revolutionary intentions to political jokes, let alone practical power to realize these intentions). The reception of jokes, as in other narrative traditions, depends on circumstances and mediating human agency no less than on content and structure. In this (among other things), he argues, the folkloric text differs from the biological gene, and folkloristics differs from "memetics" and other theories based on evolutionary assumptions.
Thus, before explaining the meaning of the text, folklorists need (1) to identify the alternative logic or pseudo-logic, usually dependent on genre and structure but also on other means of expression embodied in it, and (2) to examine in detail the circumstances of its appearance as a recurring communicative act. Only then they might be able to suggest meanings. The methodology is therefore deciphering the elements of incongruity in the case of the joke (which turns out to be quite a challenging task) alongside a comparative and contextual, diachronic and synchronic, reading which points to its constant as well as changing elements. If possible, he suggests also to deal with the questions of who refrains from telling this tradition, where, and when. An example of the importance of such a reading is illustrated in the afterword with a collection of three sexual jokes from 1995. They were told by a Captain (Ernie Blanchard) at a dinner for cadets and their guests at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut. Due to space limitations, I will present here only one joke:
[I saw] a cadet's fiancée wearing a brooch featuring maritime signal flags. She said the flags meant "I love you". They really said, "Permission granted to lay alongside." (see page 171)
Oring points to the sexual meaning that the captain (as a classic trickster) attributes to the fiancée's words, who simply declared her love for her partner. The captain uses a professional terminology to convey this message, terminology from the everyday life in the Navy that emphasizes the incongruity between the two living environments or social circles of the seafarers–that of the sea and that of the shore. I think that incongruity can already be identified in the appearance of the fiancée with a brooch featuring maritime signal flags, an appearance that confronts the "cadet" script with that of the "husband" and is common in seafarers' humor (against the background of the masculine, hierarchical, and isolated nature of this community). One can argue with Oring regarding the claim that there are no graphic sexual descriptions here and in additional jokes; in my opinion, there are. However, if we accept the common, comprehensively tested, and convincing claim that jokes embody incongruity or spurious logic, then the alternative logic of this joke and those that follow it is that there is a conflict between the cadet's lifestyle as a seafarer and his personal life. This incongruity is manifested not only in the gap between the fiancée's words and the captain's words (between love and sex), but also in her bizarre brooch and between the maritime terminology and the physical act it actually represents. This incongruity between the competing life environments may also characterize the meeting between the captain and the fiancée in the liminal space of the shore, where one might wonder–to whom does the silent cadet in the joke belong? Against this background, we can hypothesize that by reinterpreting the woman's words in the joke, the captain actually pointed to the impossible transition of all members of his audience between the two scripts–that of the cadet and that of the husband.
But the terrible fate of this joke was different. A group of women who attended the dinner where it was told complained about the captain. He was required to apologize, but that was not enough and a criminal investigation was launched. The captain offered to resign from his position in order to avoid the investigation, but he was turned down. Fearing that the trial would leave him and his family without pension, the captain committed suicide. His story was later described in Ladson F. Mills's book, Abandoned Shipmate, as part of a "culture of coverup" in the United States Navy and Coast Guard. Oring calls this supposedly egalitarian discourse “Victorian,” and explains why women will not be able to benefit from such a discourse if it is fully implemented. A joke can definitely harass, as he writes, "but it would greatly depend on the nature of the joke, the character of the teller, the person to whom it is told, and the circumstances of its telling" (173). In other words, if we assume (as Freud's followers and Legman suggest) that the sexual joke is equal or similar to sexual behavior and suspect as being sexual harassment, not only will we miss the social and psychological thought guiding it, but we will also lose its proven social contribution to workplaces, families, and other groups. The concluding discussion mentions a variety of studies showing that the sexual joke preserves taboo prohibitions and prevents unwanted sexual behavior, not the opposite. Thus, if we ask folklorists to explain the appearance of the captain's jokes at that dinner, they should be able to refer (through structuralist-comparative, synchronic, and diachronic reading) to the conflict or pseudo-logic embodied in them, that are not necessarily related to sexual intention or behavior. They will examine not only the immediate context in which the joke was told (in the liminal space where commanders and family members meet on shore) but also the broader social context of the seafarers' (and maybe also military) lifestyle, and the cultural context of the group’s unique folklore, particularly jokes. Maybe it was not the first time that Captain Blanchard expressed himself or behaved inappropriately in the company of women, and maybe he should not have played the role of the trickster, even outside the ship, and such a behavior should have been condemned and even punished. However, and without going into the details of this shocking case, The Consolations of Humor offers to study it also as an "artistic communication," subject to alternative "laws" or principals whose vitality is revealed or needed precisely where the limitations of normative discourse are felt.
Still the question remains—are those social, cultural, and literary or artistic contexts of the joke sufficient to serve as "empirical evidence," solid and valid and such that they can convincingly explain it, and yet, be challenged, in the eyes of the folklorist as a scientist? Can we save Descartes' "thinking self" from his skepticism and solipsism (see this essay's motto) through a scientific rationale that is not exactly positivistic? I hope that side by side with the key concepts that Oring unpacks in this book there will also be room in the future for the challenging idea of valid ethnographic or folkloristic "evidence," because its form, uses, and implications may benefit from such an intriguing investigation.
[Review Length: 1690 words • Review posted on September 16, 2025]