The Quotation and Its Genres

Abstract

Despite its immense popularity attested by countless collections, the quotation as a literary form has gone largely unstudied. Quotations as they appear in anthologies often differ from the original extract because of a process of transformation into a literary form. Some quotations seek an author, others lose them. In general, it is fruitful to study quotations by dividing them into genres, each characterized by a world view that in turn leads to specific forms, tones, and contexts. Witticisms, maxims, dicta, proverbs, and aphorisms each inhabit a different world. Witticisms display the power of mind over circumstance, dicta purport to offer a timeless absolute truth recently discovered, and aphorisms gesture to mysteries that, the more we explore them, grow still more mysterious. Each short form may be related to or inhabit longer forms with a roughly similar world view. Some longer works seem designed to be taken apart into specific quotations.