Feeling very, very silly

[gremot]

Something a lot of people don't realize though, is the difference between assigning your own (filthy/sexual/whatever) interpretation to a text and reading it from a diachronic perspective that takes into account its origins/time of production/original intent and designated readership.

Fact is a lot of today's "Disney" fairy-tales were written by 18th century noblewomen to explain their futures as married women to their unmarried (and thus virgin) daughters.

Beauty and the Beast is one of those, written by Madame Leprince de Beaumont (not Perrault, as many people seem to assume) to instruct the younger ladies of the court that an older grumpy husband can actually be quite tender. While the rose-as-vagina may seem to us somewhat far-fetched, it was in fact an already existing and relatively self-evident trope in courtly literature at the time... Consider it the delicate 18th century equivalent to today's euphemistic promise rings or whatnot.

Folk tales (as opposed to literary tales penned by one author) like the ones recorded by the Grimms are sometimes even more explicitly sexual. Rapunzel, for instance, is teeming with allegoric representations of intercourse and is basically a giant metaphor of losing your virginity.

Sorry to get all lecture-y on you. I just wrote a cool couple papers on this.

this was actually really interesting to read

[mudlark]

Quote

I am kindof tired of everyone voting down my posts, so if anyone can give me a clue as to why this is happening, I'd be appreciative. I like to think of myself as open minded, albeit opinionated at times.

Part of it might be that thread that you started about your reputation. It clearly gets under your skin, which might motivate people to keep it up.

You do not come across as open-minded to me. You have a tendency to hijack threads in order to expound your own theories about individuality and freedom, and then yell at anyone who disagrees and accuse them of being conformists. Not a very open-minded thing to do. Neither is comparing someone to Hitler with next to no provocation.

Even your more innocuous posts seem like they're just excuses for you to prove how radical and freethinking you are, and how boring and pedestrian everyone around you is. Frankly, it gets tiring to read. It doesn't seem like you're here to actually interact with people on the issues that they want to talk about... it seems like you're just here to posture and make yourself feel rebellious, which is better suited to a blog than a message board.

[Victorianna]

Melusine, thank you for the interesting discussion. Beauty and the Beast was one of my childhood favorites. It is so interesting to read your evaluation. Oh, the innocence of youth

In one of my SOPs I began by taking about school X and ended by discussing why school Y would be a good fit. Luckily for me I discovered this before submitting.

[Tall Chai Latte]

Same here. I sent a resume to Johns Hopkins with Washington University in St. Louis" on it. Haven't heard back from both schools yet... Wish me luck...

[Tall Chai Latte]

On 11/17/2008 at 12:17 AM, jonhenry said:

Last year I wrote to a Duke prof. and told him I was interested in studying with him at WashU.

OH I LOL'ed on this one. Once I emailed Michigan PIBS asking them when is the deadline for Cornell's application..

[Ilikekitties]

I put a prof's name as Naisgari when it's actually Naisargi in my SOP. I feel like I'm gonna throw up.

[bicsy]

Thanks for digging this up @LittleCritterB, I enjoyed perusing this thread. Sorry about your typo. Don't stress it; it's probably so insignificant that it won't affect your chances. 

Can we make a post dedicated to silly typos? You know, to lighten the mood of application season.