Russkie Poslovitsy ─ Russian Proverbs in Literature, Politics, and Pedagogy: Festschrift for Kevin J. McKenna in Celebration of His Sixty-fFfth Birthday

Although this volume is described as a Festschrift in honor of Kevin J. McKenna (professor of Russian language, literature, and culture at U. of Vermont) it differs from most such works in presenting a collection of McKenna's own writings on the subject of Russian proverbs in literature, politics, and pedagogy. In the section on literature, McKenna examines the use of proverbs in works by Catherine the Great, Leo Tolstoy, Boris Pasternak, Vladimir Nabokov, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and Sergei Eisenstein. He then examines the use of proverbs in headlines in the newspaper Pravda, in Pravda cartoons, and in the speeches of Vladimir Putin. Lastly, he considers proverbs in the Russian language curriculum and Russian language textbooks, including those for Russian-as-a-second-language learners. Annotation c2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Wolfgang Mieder is Professor of German and Folklore at the University of Vermont. Like his colleague and friend Kevin J. McKenna, he is especially interested in proverbs in politics, to wit his books ?No Struggle, No Progress?: Frederick Douglass and His Proverbial Rhetoric for Civil Rights (2001), ?Yes We Can?: Barack Obama’s Proverbial Rhetoric (2009), and ?Making a Way Out of No Way?: Martin Luther King’s Sermonic Proverbial Rhetoric (2010). His two books Proverbs Are Never Out of Season: Popular Wisdom in the Modern World (2012) and Proverbs: A Handbook (2012) serve as surveys of the field of paremiology, that is, the study of proverbs.