PROVERB
. Although nearly impossible to define, proverbs—statements of a universal nature
borrowed from philosophers, the fathers of the church, the Bible, or popular wisdom—
are found in every genre of medieval literature. The Middle Ages collected proverbs,
with little care as to their origin. Widely used as a textbook in medieval schools, the
Disticha Catonis, a proverb collection wrongly attributed to Cato, was paraphrased in
Occitan (two 12th-c. fragments extant) and translated by three Anglo-Norman authors,
each of whom appended commentary to the text. There are also two Francien versions of
the Disticha, one of the most widely diffused works of the Middle Ages. Another
collection, actually an anthology of biblical and medieval sententious statements
attributed to classical authors, the Moralium dogma philosophorum, was translated into
French in the 13th century, again by three different authors, including Alard de Cambrai.
Popular proverbs were also collected. The first of these collections is the Proverbia
magistri Serlonis (1150–70), an anthology of French proverbs with Latin translations.
The Proverbes Seneke le philosophe (1278–81) uses a similar format, attributing to
Seneca proverbs from a variety of sources. In a more developed vein is the Proverbes au
vilain (1174–91), composed of sixains that explain a proverb, followed by the proverb
itself, which acts as commentary on the preceding verses. The Proverbes de Marcoul et
de Salemon (early 13th c.) present a dialogue between the wise King Solomon and the
boorish peasant Marcoul, the whole punctuated with proverbs. Eight manuscripts
preserve three distinct versions, the first two being obscene and scatological, while the
third is quite proper. Proverb collections were also assembled for preachers; these
anthologies include an allegorical commentary on each proverb. Some 2,500 French
proverbs are recorded prior to 1400.
Medieval authors mined anthologies for proverbs to insert into their works. The
fabliaux, in particular, are notable for the use of proverbial material as commentary on
the story. By the 15th century, use of the proverb had become so fashionable that there
are poems composed entirely of proverbs, such as Villon’s Ballade des proverbes.
Wendy E.Pfeffer
Morawski, Joseph, ed. Les diz et proverbes des sages. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France,
1924.
——. Proverbes français antérieurs au XVe siècle. Paris: Champion, 1925.
Ruhe, Ernstpeter, ed. Les proverbes Seneke le philosophe. Munich: Hueber, 1969.
Schulze-Busacker, Elisabeth, ed. Proverbes et expressions proverbiales dans la littérature
narrative du moyen âge français: recueil et analyse. Paris: Champion, 1985.
Tobler, Adolf, ed. Li proverbe au vilain: Die Sprichwörter des gemeinen Mannes. Altfranzösischen
Dichtung nach den bisher bekannten Handschrifren herausgegeben. Leipzig: Hirzel, 1895.
Jauss, Hans Robert, and Erich Köhler, eds. Grundriss der romanischen Literaturen des Mittelalters.
Heidelberg: Winter, 1970, Vol. 6: La littérature didactique, allégorique et satirique, tome 2:
Partie documentaire, ed. Jürgen Beyer and Franz Koppe, pp. 151–61.
Mieder, Wolfgang. International Proverb Scholarship: An Annotated Bibliography. New York:
Garland, 1982; First Supplement, 1990; Second Supplement, 1993.
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