Early American proverbs and proverbial phrases

Author(s)

Bibliographic Information

Early American proverbs and proverbial phrases

Bartlett Jere Whiting

Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1977

Available at  / 114 libraries

Search this Book/Journal

Note

Bibliography: p. xxxiii-lxiv

Includes indexes

Description and Table of Contents

Description

p.B. J. Whiting savors proverbial expressions and has devoted much of his lifetime to studying and collecting them; no one knows more about British and American proverbs than he. The present volume, based upon writings in British North America from the earliest settlements to approximately 1820, complements his and Archer Taylor's Dictionary of American Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases, 1820-1880. It differs from that work and from other standard collections, however, in that its sources are primarily not "literary" but instead workaday writings - letters, diaries, histories, travel books, political pamphlets, and the like. The authors represent a wide cross-section of the populace, from scholars and statesmen to farmers, shopkeepers, sailors, and hunters. Mr. Whiting has combed all the obvious sources and hundreds of out-of-the-way publications of local journals and historical societies. This body of material, "because it covers territory that has not been extracted and compiled in a scholarly way before, can justly be said to be the most valuable of all those that Whiting has brought together," according to Albert B. Friedman. "What makes the work important is Whiting's authority: a proverb or proverbial phrase is what BJW thinks is a proverb or proverbial phrase. There is no objective operative definition of any value, no divining rod; his tact, 'feel,' experience, determine what's the real thing and what is spurious."

Table of Contents

Introduction Bibliographical References Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases Appendixes A. "Thoughts on Proverbs" by S.P.L. B. Yankee Phrases C. Proverb, Proverbial, Proverbially Indexes Important Words Proper Nouns

by "Nielsen BookData"

Details

Page Top