With Behold the Proverbs of a People: Proverbial Wisdom in Culture, Literature, and Politics, Wolfgang Mieder further cements his reputation as the world’s leading authority on proverb study. The book’s thirteen chapters have all been published previously in some version (as contributions to other volumes or journal articles), but Mieder’s compiling them here as a single collection, as the “fruits of [his] recent labors,” and tying them together with a dedicated introduction conveys something of the exceptional breadth of his paremiological inquiries. The titular phrase, “Behold the Proverbs of a People,” is drawn from Carl Sandburg’s lengthy 1928 poem “Good Morning, America,” which reels off a catalogue of American vernacular expressions, many of them proverbial, invoking the cultural and linguistic diversity of a multi-ethnic nation comprised of immigrants. An immigrant himself, Mieder discovered Sandburg’s poem not long after he came to America and it inspired his first publication in English (“‘Behold the Proverbs of a People’: A Florilegium of Proverbs in Carl Sandburg’s Poem ‘Good Morning, America,’” Southern Folklore Quarterly 1971). Since then, Mieder has been a scholarly dynamo, with scores of authored/edited books and countless articles to his credit. Behold, whose title harks back to that germinal inspiration years ago, punctuates an astoundingly productive career of proverb scholarship.

After a summarizing introduction, the book sets the stage with three foundational chapters historicizing and theorizing the genre: “‘The Wit of One, and the Wisdom of Many’: Proverbs as Cultural Signs of Folklore,” “ ‘Many Roads Lead to Globalization’: The Translation and Distribution of Anglo-American Proverbs,” and “‘Think Outside the Box’: Origin, Nature, and Meaning of Modern Anglo-American Proverbs.” The remaining chapters (4-13) are organized by the three divisions of the book’s subtitle (proverbial wisdom in culture, literature, and politics); they are more surgical in their way, principally case studies of individual proverb cycles/themes and noteworthy practitioners. In chapter 5, for example, Mieder examines Barrack Obama’s use of proverbs, pseudo-proverbs, and proverbial phrases in his 2009 inaugural address, as well as the proverbial ethos of other important speeches he delivered on the world stage later that same year—at the Turkish Parliament in April, Cairo University in June, and accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in December. Even President Obama’s detractors concede that he possesses considerable oratory skills. Mieder’s analysis demonstrates that an important part of that speech craft is the President’s artful use of proverbial rhetoric.

Mieder similarly explores the proverb elocutions of other skilled wordsmiths like Martin Luther King, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Friedrich Nietzsche (in chapters 4, 8, and 10, respectively). Chapter 7 surveys the profusion of proverbial wisdom on the topic of war and peace, and then focuses particularly on twentieth-century treatments of the biblically-based proverbial expression “to beat swords into plowshares.” Elsewhere in the volume, Mieder parses individual proverbs like “to build castles in Spain” and “Let George Do It,” and analyzes with remarkable insight the interplay between proverbs and narrative (e.g., fable), poetry, and notions of place.

Mieder acknowledges modestly that Behold the Proverbs of a People is a testament to his “ongoing dedication to tilling the fascinating field of international paremiology.” The book is extraordinarily well researched, deeply immersed in the intellectual discourse of paremiology (with a substantial scholarly apparatus), and written in an animated, approachable style throughout. Mieder is unfailingly attentive to relevant historical, cultural, and social contexts in which proverbs are couched. All said, Behold may well stand as one of his most important books on the subject to which he has dedicated a life of study.

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[Review length: 589 words • Review posted on April 15, 2015]