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This book takes an engaging look at the significance of traditional proverbs and their variation in the modern world. From sales pitch to propagandistic tool, Wolfgang Mieder looks at how we adapt proverbs to rapidly changing social attitudes - the original wording of proverbs changes to fit modern advertising slogans or political rhetoric, misogynist sayings become feminist slogans, and late medieval woodcuts illustrating proverbs find their modern equivalents in political cartoons and comic strips. The book is richly illustrated and contains name, subject, and proverb indexes.
About the author
Wolfgang Mieder is Professor of German and Folklore at the University of Vermont, where he served for 31 years as the chairperson of the Department of German and Russian. He is an internationally acknowledged proverb scholar, the author of the two-volume International Bibliography of Paremiology and Phraseology (2009), and the founding editor of Proverbium: Yearbook of International Proverb Scholarship (since 1984). His numerous books and articles are concerned with cultural, folkloristic, historical, linguistic, literary, philological, social, and political topics.
Summary
From sales pitch to propagandistic tool, the author looks at how we adapt proverbs to change social attitudes - the original wording of proverbs changes to fit modern advertising slogans or political rhetoric and late medieval woodcuts illustrating proverbs to find their modern equivalents in political cartoons and comic strips.
Report
«...Mieder cannot do wrong as far as the proverb is concerned...I have admired his work and his encyclopedic knowledge of the topic for a long time...» (W.F.H. Nicolaisen, University of Aberdeen)
«Having done more for proverbs than anyone since Benjamin Franklin and Poor Richard, Wolfgang Mieder is still not finished with the subject...this (is a) charming...book.» (Kenneth Turan, The Los Angeles Times Book Review)
