INSIGHTS FROM THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE PROVERBIAL LANGUAGE AND INTERTEXTUALITY IN GARY LARSON’S THE FAR SIDE
Article Sidebar
409-460
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Main Article Content
Abstract
This paper examines proverbs in the work of the popular cartoonist Gary Larson, creator of the daily panel The Far Side. It looks particularly at Larson’s use of the literalized metaphor as a way to suggest reversed hierarchies and thus open the way for social criticism. In this way, it suggests a connection between Larson’s work and the centuries-old tradition of World Upside-Down art, which also featured literalized proverbs. It recognizes, however, that such cartoons fre-quently inhabit the border between sense and nonsense, making out-right social criticism less likely than a general lampooning of social norms and ideals. Through close analysis of many Far Side cartoons, it reveals many of Larson’s intertextual strategies, and concludes that Larson is arguably one of the greatest proverb illustrators of all time. An index of proverbs and proverbial phrases in The Far Side is included.
Article Details
References
Ashton, John. 1990/1882. Chapbooks of the Eighteenth Century. London: Skoob Books.
Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1968. Rabelais and His World. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Basso, Keith. 1976. “’Wise Words’ of the Western Apache: Metaphor and Semantic Theory” in Meaning in Anthropology, ed. Keith Basso and Henry Selby. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Black, Max. 1962. Models and Metaphors. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.
Bolte, Johannes. 1915. “Nachschrift [zu Franz Weinitz].” Zeitschrift des Vereins für Volkskunde 25:299-305.
Brednich, Rolf W. 1975. “Die holländisch-flämischen Sprichwortbilderbogen vom Typus ‘De Blauwe Huyck’, in Miscellanea. Prof. Em. Dr. K.C. Peeters, ed. W. Van Nespen, pp. 120-131. Antwerpen: C. Govaert.
Brown, Roger. 1958. Words and Things. Glencoe, Illinois: Free Press.
Burke, Kenneth. 1957. “Literature as Equipment for Living.” In The Philosophy of Literary Form, pp293-304. New York: Vintage Books.
Burke, Peter. 1978. Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe. New York: Harper & Row.
Carnap, Rudolf. 1955. Symbolic Logic. New York: Dover Publications.
Chartier, R. and D. Julia. 1976. “Le Monde à l’Envers.” L’Arc 65:43-53.
Cherchi, Paolo. 1971. “Gli’ Adynata’ dei Trovatori.” Modern Philology 68:223-241.
Cocchiara, Giuseppe. 1963. Il Mondo alla Rovescia. Turin: P. Boringhieri.
Coupe, William A. 1966. The German Illustrated Broadsheet in the Seventeenth Century. Historical and Iconographical Studies. Baden: Heitz.
Crépeau, Pierre. 1975. “La Definition du Proverbe.” Fabula 16:285-305
Davis, Natalie Zemon. 1975. Society and Culture in Early Modern France. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.
Deruelle, Marcel. 1958. “Een Gents Gevelteken.” Oost-vlaamsche Zanten 33:8-12.
Doctor, Raymond. 1995. “Mutant Proverbs or the Tale of the Shaggy Dog.” Proverbium 12:119-141
Dundes, Alan, and Claudia A. Stibbe. 1981. The Art of Mixing Metaphors: A Folkloristic Interpretation of the Netherlandish Proverbs by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedakatemia.
Frank, Grace, and Dorothy Miner. 1937. Proverbes en Rimes. Text and Illustrations of the Fifteenth century from a French Manuscript in the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press.
Goodall, Jane. 1995. “Foreword” in The Far Side Gallery 5, by Gary Larson, pp. 5-8. Kansas City: Andrews and McMeel.
Grant, Helen F. 1973. “The World Turned Upside-Down” in Studies in Spanish Literature of the Golden Age Presented to E.M. Wilson, ed. R.O. Jones, pp. 102-125. London: Tamesis.
Grzybek, Peter. 1987. “Foundations of Semiotic Proverb Study. Proverbium 4: 39-85.
Kenner, Hedwig. 1970. Das Phänomen der Verkehrten Welt in der GriechischRömischen Antike. Klagenfurt: Geschichtsverein Kärnten.
Kristeva, Julia. 1974. La Révolution Du Langage Poétique: L’avant-garde à la fin du XIXe siècle, Lautréamont Et Mallarmé. Paris: Éditions du Seuil
Kristeva, Julia. 1980. Desire in Language. New York: Columbia University Press.
Kunzle, David. 1978. “World Upside Down: The Iconography of a European Broadsheet Type” in The Reversible World, ed. Barbara A. Babcock, pp. 39-95. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978.
Larson, Gary. 1984. The Far Side Gallery. Kansas City: Andrews & McMeel.
Larson, Gary. 1986. The Far Side Gallery 2. Kansas City: Andrews & McMeel.
Larson, Gary. 1988. The Far Side Gallery 3. Kansas City: Andrews & McMeel.
Larson, Gary. 1989. The Prehistory of The Far Side. Kansas City: Andrews & McMeel.
Larson, Gary. 1993. The Far Side Gallery 4. Kansas City: Andrews & McMeel.
Larson, Gary. 1995. The Far Side Gallery 5. Kansas City: Andrews & McMeel.
Lebeer, Louis. 1939-1940. “De blauwe huyck.” Gentsche Bijdragen tot de Kunstgeschiedenis 6:161-229.
Lieber, Michael D. 1984. “Analogic Ambiguity: A Paradox of Proverb Usage.”Journal of American Folklore 97: 423-441. Reprinted in Wise Words: Essays on the Proverb, ed. Wolfgang Mieder, pp. 99-127. New York: Garland Publishing, inc., 1994.
Mack, Dorothy. 1975. “Metaphoring as Speech Act: Some Happiness Conditions for Implicit Similes and Simple Metaphors.” Poetics 4:221-256
Meyer, Maurits de. 1962. De Volks-en Kinderprent in de Nederlanden van de 15e tot de 20e eeuw. Antwerpen: Standaard Boekhandel.
Meyer, Maurits de. 1969. “Sources iconographiques inexplorées de proverbes et dictons de siecles passés.” Proverbium 14: 396-398.
Mieder, Wolfgang. 1977. “Bibliographischer Abriss zur bildlichen Darstellung von Sprichwörtern und Redensarten,” in Forschungen und Berichte zur Volkskunde in Baden-Württemberg 1974-1977, ed. Irmgard Hampp and Peter Assion, vol. III, pp. 229-239. Stuttgart: Müller and Graff.
Mieder, Wolfgang. 1987. Tradition and Innovation in Folk Literature. Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England.
Mieder, Wolfgang. 1989. American Proverbs: A Study of Texts and Contexts. New York: Peter Lang.
Mieder, Wolfgang. 1993. Proverbs Are Never Out of Season. New York: Oxford University Press.
Mieder, Wolfgang, ed. 2004. “The Netherlandish Proverbs”. An International Symposium on the Pieter Brueg(h)els. Burlington, Vermont: The University of Vermont.
Mieder, Wolfgang, and Janet Sobieski. 1999. Proverb Iconography. An International Bibliography. New York: Peter Lang
Norrick, Neal. 1985. How Proverbs Mean: Semantic Studies in English Proverbs. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter
Odenius, Oloph. 1954. “Mundus Inversus. Nagra inledande bibliografiska anteckningar kring tre mellansvenska bildvarienter.” Arv 10:143-170.
Percy, Walker. 1958. “Metaphor as Mistake.” Sewanee Review 66:79-99. Rammel, Hal. 1990. Nowhere in America: The Big Rock Candy Mountain and Other Comic Utopias. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
Richards, I.A. 1938. Interpretation in Teaching. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Richards, I.A. 1948. The Philosophy of Rhetoric. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Röhrich, Lutz. 1959. “Sprichwörtliche Redensarten in bildlichen Zeugnissen.” Bayerisches Jahrbuch für Volkskunde: 67-79. Reprinted in Ergebnisse der Sprichwörterforschung, ed. Wolfgang Mieder. Bern, Peter Lang, 1978, pp. 87-107.
Scribner, Bob. 1978. “Reformation, Carnival, and the World Turned UpsideDown.” Social History 3:303
Seitel, Peter. 1972. Proverbs and the Structure of Metaphor among the Haya of Tanzania. Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania.
Stewart, Susan. 1980. Nonsense: Aspects of Intertextuality in Folklore and Literature. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Urban, Wilbur Marshall. 1939. Language and Reality. London: George Allen and Unwin.
Winick, Stephen D. 2011. “Fall into the (Intertextual) Gap: Proverbs, Advertisements, and Intertextual Strategies.” Proverbium 28:339-381
Winick, Stephen D. 2013. “‘Proverb is as Proverb Does’: Forrest Gump, the Catchphrase, and the Proverb.” Proverbium 30:377-428.
Wright, Thomas. 1875. A History of Caricature and the Grotesque in Literature and Art. London: Chatto and Windus.