Review of Eli Yassif, Jewish Folklore: An Annotated Bibliography

A thematic bibliography has the dual function of research summation and discipline boundary-demarcation. When a discipline is still forming, and its patterns are still pliable, a bibliography could have a stabilizing effect, laying the foundation for future scholarship. The admittance of entries from a variety of relevant fields into the bibliography establishes them as the scholarly canon, and they become the core around which subsequent research clusters. This function is apparent in particular in this bibliography of Jewish folklore. Disciplines Cultural History | Folklore | Jewish Studies | Near and Middle Eastern Studies This review is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/nelc_papers/82 Journal ofAmerican Folklore duction to the subject. Mieder has made it available again with a fine reprint, not of the original 1931 edition, but of the 1962 reprint that includes a new foreword by Taylor and An Index to "The Proverb," which had originally been published separately. For this edition Mieder has written an introduction tracing Taylor's life and work as a paremiologist, together with the bibliography of Taylor's proverb studies published earlier in Mieder's edition of Selected Writings on Proverbs by Archer Taylor (Helsinki, 1975). The following items, though occasionally trivial, might have been included: "Out of the Horse's Mouth," American Notes & Queries, 7 (1948), 158; "One for the Cutworm," Western Folklore, 17 (1958), 52-53; "Spick and Span," Western Folklore, 23 (1964), 267-268; "Raw Head and Bloody Bones," Journal of American Folklore, 77 (1964), 81; reviews of A. H. Holt, Phrase Origins (Modern Philology, 35 (1937), 109-110); W. C. Korfmacher, Othloni libellusproverbiorum (Modern Philology, 36 (1938), 102); and Edmund I. Gordon, Sumerian Proverbs (Journal of American Folklore, 73 (1960), 351-352). In his introduction Mieder speaks highly of Taylor's role as an inspirer of continuing research in proverbs. Indeed, not only was he capable of instigating initial research, but as an indefatigable letter writer, he constantly prodded his friends and colleagues into increased endeavor, generously sending photocopies of obscure materials pertinent to their interests, all the while keeping constantly aware of the work being done in proverb studies around the world. It is altogether fitting and proper that Mieder should be led to produce this new edition of The Proverb, since it is obvious that Taylor's paremiological mantle has fallen to him. Jewish Folklore: An Annotated Bibliography. By Eli Yassif. (New York: Garland Publishing, 1986. Pp. xxi + 341, introduction, index. $65.00)