The proverb process: Intertextuality and proverbial innovation in popular culture

Abstract

Historically, scholars have tended to think of proverbs as individual items, separable from the contexts in which they appear. This has led them to believe that each proverb had a relatively simple meaning, susceptible to a literal gloss. More recently, scholars have described proverbs as inseparable from discourse contexts. This group of scholars sees proverb meaning as unknowable outside of an individual, describable context. This dissertation attempts to reconcile some of the disjunctures between these paradigms of proverb scholarship in order to better understand how proverbiality affects meaning. It chooses popular culture, a realm where proverbs may appear either contextualized or alone, as the environment in which to study proverbiality. Rather than a “textual” or “contextual” paradigm, it chooses intertextuality as a primary conceptual resource for locating and discussing proverbiality. Two theoretical chapters describe and define the proverb according to an intertextual paradigm. Three case studies then explore how proverbs, as understood intertextually, can affect the meanings of the cultural forms within which they are embedded. The case studies demonstrate that the perception of proverbiality has a profound effect on the meanings that readers find within texts. Most of the popular, political and critical interpretations of Forrest Gump, for example, use one of Gump\u27s proverbs as a structuring idea or principle. Similarly, Gary Larson\u27s The Far Side uses literalized proverbs to create a sense of ludic inversion that can directly affect the interpretation of his oeuvre. Advertisers, too, play with proverbiality, not only to persuade but also to amuse, making ads a frequently enjoyable part of our public system of verbal art. In all these ways, proverbiality—a communicated sense of vernacular wisdom—transforms our experience of popular culture. But proverbial strategy also raises important questions about the power and authority embodied by certain kinds of speech. The dissertation concludes with a consideration of the relationship between proverbial discourse and hegemony in the realm of popular culture, tying together its case studies while suggesting a direction for future scholarship