Academic literature on the topic 'Aphorisms and apothegems'

The peak of aphorisms leads us to set out questions regarding this form of expression which is a sort of mixture: half philosophy and half literature. Firstly, this paper examines the aphorism in terms of its complex definition: the maxim, the dictum, the apothegm, the enigma and the fragment. Secondly, this article brings out the differences between the aphorism and other forms, such as ‘greguería’, joke and riddle. Thirdly, this paper also studies the aphorism as a genre in its history. It questions and debates the relationship between the short classic literary forms and the modern aphorism. Finally, the diachronic analysis of the aphorism and the terminological analysis lead to a conception of this form that is linked to the human facticity, based on the intersection between world and language.

The existence of various approaches to attributing the proverb to different branches of linguistics is due to the narrow, often intuitive, understanding of its meaning as an ancient, generalized and transmitted one of folk descent. The similarity with units of paremiology, as defined in explanatory and terminological dictionaries, brings even more confusion to the issue of delimiting recited forms. Indeed, aphorisms, apophthegms, maxims are semantically and structurally very similar to proverbs because, like proverbs, they are concise, often self-sufficient statements of an instructive nature, which are read, understood, and interpreted independently of the surrounding text. All these recited forms also have a stable syntactic and semantic structure, and, at first glance, it is difficult to judge which of the expressions is an aphorism, a maxim, an apothegm, and which a proverb. Thus, analyzing the features of the proverb as a language unit, that is, its similarity with other oral art forms, semantic and syntactic completeness and autonomy, and its bipartite structure, as well as determining common and different features of paremiological units, the most complete definition of the proverb and criteria for delimiting recited forms may be found. Here, autonomy means the feature of a unit to be in any part of speech, and completeness – the unit’s functioning as a self-sufficient expression. The attention is also paid to the bipartite structure, as most units (approx. 65%) are rhythmically constructed compound or complex sentences. The research is based on French, Russian, and Latvian theoretical and empirical material; the sources of the units are dictionaries and collections of proverbs in three languages compiled in the 20th century.

Slightly revised version of her dissertation (Ph. D.), Universität-Bremen, 1999--Cf. p. (7).
Anhang presents the aphorisms chiefly discussed, those by Jean Paul, Novalis, and Friedrich Schlegel. Includes bibliographical references (p. 110-115).

This dissertation coordinates two problems which have hitherto resisted adequate synthesis: the form-critical problem of describing proverbial-sounding Synoptic sayings and the tradition-historical problem of assessing the rhetorical habits of Jesus and his immediate successors in oral tradition. The approach taken here to linking these qualifies not only form-critical assumptions of continuity between written forms - in Kleinliteratur - and identifies oral Sitze im Leben of mnemotechnical scholasticism, but also of the recent emphases on radical discontinuity between oral and writing modes of tradition. The connection proposed here between re-description of so- called Wisdom-sayings and oral traditional aspects of the gospels is in the Hellen educational category of gnome. Defined, exemplified and prescribed in basic Graeco-Roman educational texts as well as in technical, philosophical manuals of Rhetoric and in a rich collection-literature, gnome is superbly attested as an exercise in primary education, in all kinds of public-speaking and in cross-cultural (including Jewish) tradition. Moreover, Hellenistic cultivation of gnome primarily as a speech-type, indeed as a conversational means of argumentation in any Sitz im Leben, and only secondarily though still extensively as a literary technique makes it a particularly pertinent term of comparison for New Testament criticism. Recognizing gnomic continuity between oral and written Synoptic tradition allows discussion of the authenticity not only of individual sayings (on criteria of dissimilarity), but also collectively of the gnomic manner (on criteria of oral-literate continuity and multiple attestation): quite apart from the (in)authenticity of each gnome, gnomic style is central to Jesus' self-expression and earliest tradition. In this sense gnomai are a particularly valuable data-set for reassessing the critically controverted relationship between Jesus' rhetoric and law: in Synoptic tradition gnome is exploited suggestively as a non-legal means of addressing conventionally legal topics.

The expanding potential for the dissemination and archiving of aphorisms is explored in this practice-based research thesis. An aphorism is a short statement that communicates an insight about the world (and can sometimes function as a guide to action). Eric McLuhan, interviewed in Signs of the Times: The History of Writing (Goëss Video, 1996), suggests that the future of the book is the aphoristic statement. Aphoristic knowledge has traditionally been transmitted through texts and through libraries, but this project brings into play various modes of recirculating aphoristic texts using contemporary distribution networks and digital media such as moving image, projection on to urban screens, artists’ books, archival digital photography and glazed ceramics. Texts ‘virally inhabit’ a number of sites and languages in a series of works situated in the interdisciplinary context of contemporary text art and artists’ books. The sayings rejoin the cultural river of ideas in local and international incarnations. Practice-based work (80%) and exegesis (20%)