The Igor Tale: Humor and Irony

[Daniel Rancour-Laferriere]

29 March 2006

Dear Colleagues,

As for "John Reed," it is difficult to decide whether that posting is a 
practical joke meant to make fun of psychoanalysis, or is actually the 
looney thesis proposal of an undergraduate who needs a lot of guidance 
at the start of a project.  I have seen similarly weird proposals in my 
32 years of undergrad teaching.  Also, I recall that Carl Proffer 
(founder of Ardis) once set out to write a spoof on a psychoanalytic 
study of Pushkin's "Skupoi rytsar'," and in the end was so convinced by 
his own joke that he developed it seriously and published it as an 
article titled "Pushkin and Parricide" in the journal _American Imago_ 
(see p. 32 of the RLP volume).

Humor itself is a path into the unconscious, and if "John Reed" wrote a 
joke, he may have revealed more about himself than he intended.

Isn't it ironic, also, that the Igor Tale itself may be a hoax?  (See 
the recent book by Edward Keenan on Josef Dobrovsky).  Keenan observes 
that Dobrovsky suffered from severe depression.  When Keenan presented 
his thesis at a recent Slavic conference, I walked up to him afterwards 
and pointed out some psychiatric evidence for his thesis: people who 
suffer serious depression often have serious memory problems as well.  
It is possible that Dobrovsky literally forgot that he wrote the Igor 
tale, then honestly came to believe that he had discovered it.  Keenan 
waved his arm in disgust, and while turning away from me declared he 
does not believe in "psychoanalysis at a distance."

Regards to the list,

Daniel Rancour-Laferriere

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