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08574_Field_TCGG T339.txt
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1996-04-10
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16 lines
quite impertinent.
Only two more items in this part of our mosaic of The
Gutenberg Galaxy are needed. One of them is timeless, and the
other is right on the focal point of the sixteenth century
metamorphosis via print. First, then, the matter of the proverb,
the maxim, the aphorism, as an indispensable mode of oral
society. Chapter 18 of J. Huizinga’s The Waning of the Middle
Ages is devoted to this theme of how in an oral society, ancient
or modern,
. . . every event, every case, fictitious or historic, tends to
crystallize, to become a parable, an example, a proof, in
order to be applied as a standing instance of a general
moral truth. In the same way every utterance becomes a
dictum, a maxim, a text. For every question of conduct