Life is Like a Chicken Coop Ladder
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Life is Like a Chicken Coop Ladder: A Portrait of German Culture Through Folklore (1984) is a book by American folklorist Alan Dundes.
Background
In 1980, Alan Dundes was invited to give the presidential address at the American Folklore Society annual meeting. His presentation, later published as a monography titled "Life is Like a Chicken Coop Ladder", uses folkspeech, customs, material culture, and so forth seeking to demonstrate an anal-erotic fixation of German national character.
From the publisher
"Life Is Like a Chicken Coop Ladder" was first published in 1984 and from the outset inspired a wide variety of reactions ranging from high praise to utter disgust. Alan Dundes' theses identifies a strong anal erotic element in German national character, citing numerous examples of scatological data from authentic compilations of German folklore. The examination of this single trait of German character is used to demonstrate that national character exists and that its existence is unambiguously documented by the folklore of a nation. Dundes is of the opinion that the use of folkloristic data minimizes subjective bias in the study of national character, since unedited or uncensored, it constitutes a unique way of looking at a culture from the inside-out rather than from the outside-in, the more typical situation of an outside observer trying to understand a foreign culture.
See also
