Reading Proverbs Across Cultures

Proverbs express a perceived truth based on common sense or experience, and are used to convey wisdom, advice, or a lesson in plain language. Often presented in a metaphorical and memorizable form, they are handed down from generation to generation, referring to one thing by mentioning another, thus creating a comparison or correspondence. In this course, we read selections from the biblical Book of Proverbs, an example of traditional wisdom literature about religious and secular values, moral behavior, and the meaning of right spiritual conduct. For comparison and contrast, we also read parables and proverbial expressions from other cultures, including China. We pay particular attention to the structure, as well as the enlightening social value of proverbial expressions, among them, the negative imperative (“Don’t beat a dead horse”); the positive imperative (“If the shoe fits, wear it”); the use of parallel phrases (“Garbage in, garbage out”); the rhetorical question (“Is the Pope Catholic?”), and the declarative question (“Birds of a feather flock together”).