The Secret Lives of Proverbs: Considering the Intersection of Sentential Material and Meta-Sentential Contexts (A Panel Discussion)

In studies of medieval wisdom, critics tend to fall into one of two camps. Some, such as Shippey, Hansen, and Bloomfield, follow the lead of Biblical wisdom scholars, broadly defining wisdom as a cultural interface for a complex dance of pragmatic and theoretical concerns, often marked by though not strictly defined by the inclusion of paremial units and sentential materials. Others, such as Deskis, Cavill, and Whiting, have preferred to restrict their studies to sayings distinctly exhibiting a predetermined set of paremial markers. Both methods have produced remarkable results in their proper spheres, but the premise of this panel is that further fruitful discoveries will be made by bringing the best of each of these approaches into conversation with the best of the other. For those with a more paremiological proclivity, this will mean considering individual sentences as actors against the backdrop of a larger meta-sentential tapestry, whether this be religious, philosophical, metaphysical, psychological, or material. For those preferring a broader definition of wisdom, it will mean locating a particular paremial instance (or instances) as an instantiation of or actor within such discourses. Grounded in the premise of the scholarly fruitfulness of such dialogue and collaboration, this panel discussion invites each panelist to answer the following question through brief consideration of a particular case study in his or her field: What are the discursive mechanics of the way(s) medieval proverbs navigate the social imaginaries implicit in the texts and contexts that are their media?Karl A. E. Persson