Tuesday, April 06, 2004
Proverb scholar at USI
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Popular proverbs like “There’s no fool like an old fool” and “Practice what you preach” are common in conversation. There are modern proverbs like “Different strokes for different folks” and “Garbage in, garbage out.” Proverbs, both old and new, continue to serve us well as concise statements of apparent truths, explains Wolfgang Mieder, author of Proverbs Are Never Out of Season: Popular Wisdom in the Modern Age. Mieder, the world’s leading proverb scholar, will deliver the Distinguished Scholar lecture at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 22 in Mitchell Auditorium at the University of Southern Indiana. The Distinguished Scholar lecture is an annual program sponsored by the School of Liberal Arts. Meider will cover how proverbs such as “Government of the people, by the people, and for the people” have been used by statesmen, suffragettes, and politicians to communicate their messages. He will outline the history of the development of proverbs showing they belong to a basic list of fundamental axioms that serve as guideposts for a democratic society. Dr. Mieder is professor of German and Folklore and chair of the German and Russian Department at the University of Vermont. He has published over 50 books on the subject of proverbs including the Dictionary of American Proverbs, a compendium of proverbs collected in the United States from oral use during the 40-year span from 1945 to 1985, proof of the vitality of the proverbial wisdom in the 20th century. Since 1984 he has been the editor of Proverbium: Yearbook of International Proverb Scholarship, an annual book that is published by the University of Vermont with subscriptions from around the world. Dr. Mieder will deliver a second lecture, “A Proverb is Worth a Thousand Words: Folk Wisdom in the Modern Mass Media,” at 3:30 p.m. on Friday, April 23 in Kleymeyer Hall of the Liberal Arts Center. Both lectures are free and open to the public. |
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