Estudio del refrán ‘aunque la mona se vista de seda, mona se queda’ desde la perspectiva paremiológica

Abstract

With the aim of delving deeper into a genre of oral literature, the proverbs, this paper contains the study of the Spanish proverb "Aunque la mona se vista de seda, mona se queda" (the correspondence to "You can't make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear") from a paremiological perspective. After analysing the formal features of a proverb, its key idea is specified and its meaning is explained, to then find out what variants exist in lexicographical, paremiographical and literary sources, without forgetting the variants provided by oral sources. Afterwards, the semantic relations that this proverb establishes with other proverbs are dealt with, not only in terms of synonymy, but also in terms of antonymy and hyponymy. Finally, the identification of correspondences with paremias from other languages will allow us to have a better knowledge of the life of this proverb and to reach results of interest for the comparative study with other proverbs. Thus, this paper provides a method for analysing proverbs based on research conducted on the complex nature of proverbs.