Contents -- 1 Introduction: The Golden Age of Aphorism -- The Mad Judge, or Manners without Morals: From La Rochefoucauld's mot juste to Chamfort's mot fou -- The World According to Poor Richard -- 2 Aphorism and Theology: Blaise Pascal, Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards, and the Sorcery of Rhetoric -- 3 Aphorism and Literary Epistemology: Maurice Blanchot, Paul de Man, and Marcel Proust -- 4 Aphorism and Criticism: Deconstruction and the Commonplace Tradition -- 5 Aphorism and Fable: La Fontaine and Joel Chandler Harris -- 6 Aphorism and Modern Poetry: The Advent of the Antimaxim -- 7 Afterword -- Works Cited -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- V -- W -- Z.