ABSTRACT
This essay to illustrate how this sort of “folk commentary,” when merged with Dundes’ general approach to folklore, can provide new insight into a folk narrative that has been the subject of several earlier investigations. The value of the folklore collections maintained at places like Berkeley and Indiana lies precisely in the fact that these collections permit scholars access to texts that are not available—and cannot be made available, given the constraints of publication—in published sources. The Boyfriend’s Death (TBD) is thus a fantasy in which this “real life” situation is reversed. The psychological associations that shape folklore traditions are often psychological associations that have been established as the result of phonetic similarities. The Introduction as being the defining features of Dundes’ approach to folklore, namely: the belief that folk narratives are appealing because they represent the disguised fulfillment of unconscious wishes, and the methodological injunction to pay careful attention to folkloric variation.
