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Curses and blessings in Theocritus Blessings and curses, intended respectively as positive or negative wishes, belong to folkloric culture and for this reason – paradoxically – find a place in learned Alexandrian poetry
In this study we analyze the results of a sociolinguistic survey conducted in Hungary in 2004–2005, with the goal of exploring some popular views of the proverb and anti-proverb and their functions in contemporary Hungarian society. Using data collected from 298 subjects, we focus on three major questions. First, our aim was to establish the lists of the proverbs most frequently used nowadays, as well as the ones most popular for variation. Our second goal was to discover our subjects’ thoughts about the use of proverbs and anti-proverbs, as well as about their views of the people who use them. And, last but not least, our third task was to compare what people say about their own usage of proverbs and anti-proverbs to what they think about the ways in which other people use these expressions.The complex analysis of the results of the survey can illumine interesting aspects; for example, the correlation between the subject’s gender and age and the use of proverbs and anti-proverbs. We also have to deal with the contradictions of folk concepts concerning this topic: there is a significant contrast between the ways in which subjects describe their own habits and the ways in which they talk about other people’s use of proverbs and anti-proverbs.
European legal folk customs research from the point of view of Hungarian legal ethnography. After that, the history of Hungarian legal customs research is discussed until Ernő Tárkány Szücs became involved in legal folklore research (1939–1948), then
layers of a given object or heritage. 3 In a study on legal issues related to folklore ( Verebélyi 1999 ), Kincső Verebélyi posed the question of how copyright and community law might be interpreted in material folk art and urged further research. The
In the article, the author examines the characteristic features of epic fairy-tale of the two largest ethnic groups of Ukrainian Carpathians, i.e. Ukrainians and Hungarians. The folklore of the region has its own peculiarities. The natural and geographical features of the region, trades and crafts, in particular shepherd culture, historical events, entrance to different states are represented in the folklore. At the same time, the fairy-tale tradition of the region has its own ethnolocal specification, includes various linguistic and folklore dialects, the emergence of which was also influenced by other ethnic (Hungarian, Polish, Romanian, Slovakian, Gypsy, etc.) borrowings which were adapted to withstand local forms.
cellar of the dilapidated building of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences on the Pest bank of the Danube, which contained, among other things, texts from 19th-century folklore collections. It was confirmed around the turn of the 1960s that some of these
models of the folklore stock of the Transcarpathian region also reproduced the stylistic model of a non-folklore discourse. Another very important issue concerning the algorithms for studying the piano works of Transcarpathian composers is the realization
Proverbs have never been considered sacrosanct; on the contrary, they have frequently been used as satirical, ironic or humorous comments on a given situation. Wolfgang Mieder has coined the term “Antisprichwort” (anti-proverb) for such deliberate proverb innovations (also known as alterations, mutations, parodies, transformations, variations, wisecracks, fractured proverbs). The focus of this study is on different mechanisms of variation in Anglo-American, German, French, Russian and Hungarian anti-proverbs. The mechanisms discussed and exemplified in the study include replacing a single word, substituting two or more words, changing the second part of the proverb, adding new words, adding literal interpretations, repeating identical or phonetically similar words, mixing two or more proverbs, word-order reversal, rhyme, changing the first part of the proverb, and omission of words.
On the basis of French, Hungarian, English, German and Russian corpora of anti-proverbs (deliberate proverb innovations, also known as alterations, mutations, parodies, transformations, variations, wisecracks, and fractured proverbs), we examine word play based on polysemy, homonymy, and homophony. After a survey of the proverbs most frequently used for these types of alteration, this study investigates anti-proverbs linked to the theme of sexuality. Finally, we explore the use of proper nouns in proverb transformations based on polysemy, homonymy, and homophony.
Paronomasia is a popular form of wordplay often used to transform proverbs into antiproverbs (deliberate proverb innovations, also known as alterations, mutations, parodies, transformations, variations, wisecracks, and fractured proverbs) by replacing certain phonemes with similar ones, or by adding or omitting phonemes. The present paper describes and exemplifies this sort of pun by using selected German, Hungarian, English, French and Russian language data. The first part of the paper focuses on the linguistic aspects of paronomasia; the second part stresses semantic characteristics. This study also examines the role of wordplay on the theme of sexuality, and then comments on the use of proper nouns in proverb transformations. We conclude that all five of the languages in our research corpus use similar, if not identical, approaches to forge a “twisted wisdom” out of a simple proverb.
