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RR 2015/289 Cultural Encyclopedia of the Penis Edited by Michael Kimmel, Christine Milrod and Amanda Kennedy Rowman & Littlefield Lanham, MD and London 2015 x + 251 pp. ISBN 978 0 7591 2312 0 (print); ISBN 978 0 7591 2314 4 (e-book) £54.95 $85
Keywords Body regions, Culture, Encyclopedias
Review DOI 10.1108/RR-06-2015-0147
When I set about reading the Cultural Encyclopedia of the Penis for purposes of this review, I wondered whether I would find it hard. Someone asked me if I was finding it a stiff volume. Then I wondered why such juvenile jokes were forming in my head - surely these have no place on the learned pages of Reference Reviews. Fortunately, the Encyclopedia includes a section on jokes which certainly helped to reassure me. Whilst it suggests that the volume and longevity of penis humour are only partly explained by male dominance in society, it may be that creativity and language use is a better explanation than the volume of such jokes.
There are, indeed, hundreds of synonyms for the penis, even more in respect of sexual activities and this makes penises "a perennial resource for double entendre and easily made puns". It seems that penis jokes use a basic dichotomy in that the penis is described as either very large or very small. It is suggested that the cultural fascination with the penis may stem from its changeability (from flaccid to erect) and its vital force (phallic representations and the reproductive function) that the serious elements render the penis ripe for the inverting effects of humour. The section immediately referred me on to idioms and nicknames. Idioms, of course, like slang words, tend to be metaphorical and inventive, such as "piss pipe". Penis idioms have existed in the English language, it seems, for centuries, with Mercutio, in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, alluding...