Having previously written books on the rhetorical use of proverbial language in the oral and written communications of the legendary abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass and of former US president Abraham Lincoln, and while working on a similar book about the proverbial rhetoric of current US president Barack Obama, Mieder (U. of Vermont) decided that there was a third figure that formed a triumvirate with Douglass and Lincoln from which Obama was "drawing inspiration, strength, and vision for a more perfect union and a better world," the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. In this successor work, then, he highlights the use of proverbs or proverbial phrases from folk speech and Biblical references in King's rhetoric, offering chapters that explore the appearance of proverbial language in King's books, letters, interviews, advice columns, and proverb sermons; his citations of Bible proverbs as didactic argumentation; his citation of folk proverbs as expressions of traditional wisdom; and other proverbial expressions in King's language, together with an index, occupying over half of the book (including citations and representative quotations), of proverbs and proverbial phrases in King's rhetoric from "to come of age" to "to add up to zero." Annotation ©2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
| Preface |
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vii | |
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xiii | |
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1 "Convinced beyond the shadow of a doubt" |
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Martin Luther King's Proverbial Rhetoric |
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1 | (20) |
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2 "Let your conscience be your guide" |
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The Proverbial Messages of King's Five Books |
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21 | (18) |
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3 "The cross we must bear for freedom" |
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Traditional Metaphors in the Letters |
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39 | (8) |
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4 "Practicing what we preach" |
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Proverbial Expressiveness in Interviews |
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47 | (8) |
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5 "There are rules of the game" |
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King's Proverbial "Advice for Living" |
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55 | (6) |
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Sermonic Explications of Proverbs |
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61 | (12) |
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7 "Who lives by the sword shall perish by the sword" |
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Bible Proverbs as Didactic Argumentation |
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73 | (14) |
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Folk Proverbs as Traditional Wisdom |
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87 | (18) |
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9 "The idea whose time had come moved on" |
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Turning Quotations into Proverbs |
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105 | (18) |
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10 "No lie can live forever" |
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Quotational and Proverbial Amassments |
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123 | (10) |
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11 "Freedom is not given, it is won" |
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Martin Luther King's Proverbial Quotations |
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133 | (14) |
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12 "To change someone's heart" |
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Somatic Phrases as Emotive Expressions |
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147 | (8) |
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13 "To be at the bottom of the ladder" |
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Economic Phrases as Social Signs |
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155 | (10) |
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14 "To be at the boiling point" |
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Proverbial Phrases as Signs of Tension |
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165 | (6) |
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15 "Making a way out of no way" |
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The Phraseological Way to Progress |
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171 | (16) |
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Proverbial Manifestations of a Better Future |
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187 | (20) |
| Index of Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases |
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207 | (336) |
| Bibliography |
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543 | |
Wolfgang Mieder is Professor of German and Folklore at the University of Vermont, where he served for thirty-one years as the chairperson of the Department of German and Russian. He is an internationally acknowledged proverb scholar, the author of the two-volume International Bibliography of Paremiology and Phraseology (2009), and the founding editor of Proverbium: Yearbook of International Proverb Scholarship (since 1984). His numerous books and articles are concerned with cultural, folkloristic, historical, linguistic, literary, philological, social, and political topics. Among his books related to the present volume are The Politics of Proverbs: From Traditional Wisdom to Proverbial Stereotypes (1997), The Proverbial Abraham Lincoln (2000), «No Struggle, No Progress»: Frederick Douglass and His Proverbial Struggle for Civil Rights (2001), «Call a Spade a Spade»: From Classical Phrase to Racial Slur (2002), Proverbs: A Handbook (2004), «Proverbs Are the Best Policy»: Folk Wisdom and American Politics (2005), «Proverbs Speak Louder Than Words»: Folk Wisdom in Art, Culture, Folklore, History, Literature, and Mass Media (2008), and «Yes We Can»: Barack Obamas Proverbial Rhetoric (2009).
