Abstract for the Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting, 8–10 April 2010, Venice, Italy.
Teo Juvonen (University of Helsinki), Samuli Kaislaniemi (University of Helsinki) and Melanie Evans (University of Sheffield)
In his celebrated treatise on rhetoric, The Garden of Eloquence (1593), Henry Peacham defined the proverb as a well-known and witty form of speech discerned “from common speech and ... commended by antiquitie and learning”. Proverbs in literary and poetical texts of the period have received much attention, but less is known about their use in non-literary, private genres, such as personal letters. This paper charts the use of proverbs in the Corpus of Early English Correspondence, a digital collection of over 7,000 English letters written between between 1400 and 1680. Our material allows us to compare how writers from a variety of social backgrounds – from monarchs to merchants – used proverbs in their everyday language. We consider the transmission of proverbs, the change and continuity in their use, and the implications of our findings upon current understanding of epistolary writing and renaissance rhetoric.