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Classes can be fun
Feb. 17th, 2006 12:49 amSo, guess what I did tonight in my Medieval Occitan class. No, really, guess. OK, I'll give you a hint: I brought up a completely incongruous comic personality. Give up? I brought up Eddie Izzard. In a class on Medieval Occitan poetry about courtly love (which, if I may add an aside, is the emoest thing ever, 750 years before the advent of emo itself).
How, you ask? Well, in Bernart de Ventadorn's poem "Can vei la lauzeta" ("When I see the lark"; text and translation), he uses the verb 'chaptener', 'to defend' (ln. 27). A line later, he uses the derived verb 'deschaptener,' and we were hemming and hawing as to how to translate it. Carla suggested "undefend" and I started giggling. Class ended about 10 minutes later, and before anybody had even gotten up, I explained my giggling.
You know that bit Eddie Izzard does, where he's talking about the queen? "Why do we sing God Save the Queen? Have you seen Buckingham Palace? That is one saved queen! I say we sing God Attack the Queen: o/`Oh, God, attack the queen; send big dogs after her; to bite her bum o/`" Yes, I sang the song. Course then I had to explain who Eddie Izzard was, and how I knew of him (people don't?), which led into the admission that I'd seen Dress to Kill on the free motel HBO en route to backpacking in the mountains for 11 days. Yes, I saw an erudite multilingual transvestite comedian for the first time on a Boy Scout trip. Je suis un scout... executif. Un scout... d'action!
Anyway. We solved the French problem in Louisiana in Cajun class today. Pity it was all in our heads. I can't believe what I'm typing (well, am about to type), but I would not be adverse to being involved in the question for real. It's fascinating, and it's something that has real practical application. Not that I'm really considering dropping the Creative Writing idea, of course, but it's so intriguing. Let's face it, I'm gonna be a career student anyway. <sarc> After I'm done with my DMA in music history (which I'll work on in between bouts of preparing my critically acclaimed and best-selling (take that John Grisham) first volume of poetry), I'll just go and get a PhD in Education. And then I figure I'll fix the entire American educational system while I'm at it. No use doing half a job, right?
Right. </sarc>
How, you ask? Well, in Bernart de Ventadorn's poem "Can vei la lauzeta" ("When I see the lark"; text and translation), he uses the verb 'chaptener', 'to defend' (ln. 27). A line later, he uses the derived verb 'deschaptener,' and we were hemming and hawing as to how to translate it. Carla suggested "undefend" and I started giggling. Class ended about 10 minutes later, and before anybody had even gotten up, I explained my giggling.
You know that bit Eddie Izzard does, where he's talking about the queen? "Why do we sing God Save the Queen? Have you seen Buckingham Palace? That is one saved queen! I say we sing God Attack the Queen: o/`Oh, God, attack the queen; send big dogs after her; to bite her bum o/`" Yes, I sang the song. Course then I had to explain who Eddie Izzard was, and how I knew of him (people don't?), which led into the admission that I'd seen Dress to Kill on the free motel HBO en route to backpacking in the mountains for 11 days. Yes, I saw an erudite multilingual transvestite comedian for the first time on a Boy Scout trip. Je suis un scout... executif. Un scout... d'action!
Anyway. We solved the French problem in Louisiana in Cajun class today. Pity it was all in our heads. I can't believe what I'm typing (well, am about to type), but I would not be adverse to being involved in the question for real. It's fascinating, and it's something that has real practical application. Not that I'm really considering dropping the Creative Writing idea, of course, but it's so intriguing. Let's face it, I'm gonna be a career student anyway. <sarc> After I'm done with my DMA in music history (which I'll work on in between bouts of preparing my critically acclaimed and best-selling (take that John Grisham) first volume of poetry), I'll just go and get a PhD in Education. And then I figure I'll fix the entire American educational system while I'm at it. No use doing half a job, right?
Right. </sarc>
