What Goes Around Comes Around is a collection of essays in honor of Wolfgang Mieder. As the subtitle indicates, the focus of the collection is the proverb in contemporary life. In their introduction the editors discuss the various definitions of the proverb, which is, as they note, a very difficult genre to define. At the core of most definitions seems to be a sense of proverbiality rather than a clear characterization of the genre—something is a proverb because it sounds like a proverb. From there the volume moves to Charles Clay Doyle’s “‘In Aqua Scribere’: The Evolution of a Current Proverb,” a historical study of the proverb “written in water.” This is followed by Isaac Jack Lévy and Rosemary Lévy Zumwalt’s “From One Act of Charity the World is Saved,” a study of the use of proverb in Sephardic narrative. Shirley Aurora’s essay on “Baseball as (Pan)America” examines the use of baseball metaphors and proverbs in Spanish. Stephen Winick’s essay looks at an occupational proverb, “You Can’t Kill Shit,” which is current among doctors. Jay Mechling then writes on the use of proverbs in the culture wars and its relationship to the use, or non-use, of proverbs in children’s culture in “‘Cheaters Never Prosper’ and Other Lies Adults Tell Kids: Proverbs and the Culture Wars Over Character.” Anand Prahlad’s essay deals with “The Proverb and Fetishism in American Advertising.” Jan Harold Brunvand’s contribution is a study of the use of proverbs and parodies of proverbs in Patrick O’Brian’s novels. The volume closes with an essay by Alan Dundes on lineal images in American proverbs.
The editors write in their introduction that “[i]n this collection, we look specifically at proverbs as they go out into the world beyond their usual context…as well as the ways in which the world beyond traditional folklore comes into being through the creation and recontextualization of new proverbs” (1-2), which suggests that the approaches to the proverb here will be something other than the usual approaches. A few essays, especially those by Winick and Anand, do make some use of theory, but the collection is, on the whole, rather traditional in its approach to the proverb.
Proverbs Are the Best Policy is a collection of essays by Wolfgang Mieder on the uses of proverbs in political settings. The eight essays are “‘Different Strokes for Different Folks’: American Proverbs as an International, National, and Global Phenomenon,” “‘Government of the People, by the People, for the People’: The Making and Meaning of an American Proverb about Democracy,” “‘God Helps Them Who Help Themselves’: Proverbial Resolve in the Letters of Abigail Adams,” “‘A House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand’: From Biblical Proverb to Abraham Lincoln and Beyond,” “‘Do Unto Others as You Would Have Them Do Unto You’: Frederick Douglass’s Proverbial Struggle for Civil Rights,” “‘It’s Not a President’s Business to Catch Flies”: Proverbial Rhetoric in Presidential Inaugural Addresses,” “‘We’re All in the Same Boat Now’: Proverbial Discourse in the Churchill-Roosevelt Correspondence,” and “‘Good Fences Make Good Neighbors’: The Sociopolitical Significance of an Ambiguous Proverb.” As is typical with Mieder’s work, the essays tend to the historical and textual, but as is also typical of his work, they are readable and useful studies of the use of proverbs in political discourse.
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[Review length: 551 words • Review posted on August 14, 2006]