Title: "Proverbs speak louder than words" : folk wisdom in art, culture, folklore, history, literature and mass media /
Authors: Mieder, Wolfgang.
Publisher: P. Lang,
Year: 2008
Subjects: Proverbs History and criticism; Folklore
Abstract: "This book presents a composite picture of the richness of proverbs as significant expressions of folk wisdom as is manifest from their appearance in art, culture, folklore, history, literature, and the mass media. The book draws attention to the fact that proverbs as metaphorical signs continue to play an important role in oral and written communication. Proverbs as so-called monumenta humana are omnipresent in all facets of life, and while they are neither sacrosanct nor saccharine, they usually offer much common sense or wisdom based on recurrent experiences and observations."--BOOK JACKET.
Contents: 1. "Wisdom Is Better Than Wealth": Proverbs as Expressions of Culture and Folklore -- 2. "The Proof of the Proverb Is in the Probing": Alan Dundes as Pioneering Paremiologist -- 3. "Anti-Proverbs and Mass Communication": Interplay of Traditional and Innovative Folklore -- 4. "It Pays to Proverbialize": Folk Wisdom in the Modern Mass Media -- 5. "Good Old Yankee Wisdom": Proverbs and the Worldview of New England -- 6. "History Teaches by Example": David McCullough's John Adams Biography -- 7. "Don't Swap Horses in the Middle of the Stream": History of Abraham Lincoln's Apocryphal Proverb -- 8. "A Picture Worth More Than a Thousand Words": Pieter Bruegel the Elder's Netherlandish Proverbs -- 9. "Tilting at Windmills": A Proverbial Allusion to Cervantes' Don Quixote -- 10. "Now I Sit Like a Rabbit in the Pepper": Proverbial Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.