SOURCE: Brosnahan, Leger. “Wace's Use of Proverbs.” Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies XXXIX, no. 3 (July 1964): 444-50.

In the following essay, Brosnahan outlines Wace's use of proverbs and explores the narrative, literary, and dramatic functions they serve in his work.

Pvr remembrer des ancesurs Les feiz e les diz e les murs. 

The primary intention of this study is simply to add Wace to the relatively short list of individual mediaeval authors whose uses of proverbial materials have been closely examined.¹ For the student of mediaeval proverbs the collection contains a thorough culling and classification of the various types of proverbial expressions found in Wace's five known works.² In addition, the collection offers clear indication of the frequency of occurrence of individual expressions, information necessarily lacking in formal, single-entry lists of proverbs and in frame poems of the Solomon-Marcoul or vilain dit type. The literary historian and student...