ABSTRACT
Interestingly, folklorists studying the origin and history of certain folk narratives, riddles, nursery rhymes, folk songs, proverbs, etc. have usually occupied themselves only with references from earlier times into the nineteenth century. After that they appear to lose interest in the modern and often innovative use and function of these traditional texts. Yet with the growing interest in popular culture, the mass media, and cultural literacy today, folklorists are more and more looking at which traditional proverbs survive today and which proverbs have actually been coined only in the twentieth century. For some studies of individual proverbs current today see Nigel Rees, Sayings of the Century: The Stories Behind the Twentieth Century’s Quotable Sayings (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1984); and Wolfgang Mieder, Proverbs Are Never Out of Season: Popular Wisdom in the Modern Age (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).
