The hell?
I'm a little disappointed in my textbooks.
From Christian Theology by Alister E. McGrath, fourth edition, pg 22:
Since the Renaissance, the term [Middle Ages] has been used in a rather disparaging sense to meet the somewhat uninteresting period of time separating the intellectual glories of antiquity and their retrieval in the Renaissance.
I honestly can't even form a sentence to display my indignance. Even if he does have a point, what kind of statement is that, anyway? Yeah, so it was middle, so not much intellectual stuff was going on, clearly it must be boring and not studied at all.
Because no one studies the Middle Ages. They're just boring.
Pfeh.
All right, so my Modern Asian History textbook isn't nearly as bad as Christian Theology, which is really just insultingly written -- it's like a self-righteous religious scholar who happened to be on the Blogosphere compiled all of his posts, especially those that got the most flames, and got them published. But East Asia: A New History has a new Western approach of political correctness, which I'm not sure I like. Anyway... to the quote that made me boggle.
From East Asia: A New History by Rhoades Murphy, fourth edition, pg 217:
The emperor became increasingly a figurehead, as he was to be for nearly all the rest of Japanese history. In this longish period the Fujiwara family dominated court politics and even exiled to Kyushu an emperor who had dared to appoint an official of whom they disapproved in 901.
Emphasis mine, because though these sentences are just generally badly written, COME ON. "Longish"? Is that a technical term? Okay, so it's a real word in the dictionary. I don't care that it's a real word. It sounds... just a little too casual to me.
I swear, I won't be shocked if I see Walt Disney refused to let Nikita Khrushchev into Disneyland. PWN! in my Russian History textbook next semester.
From Christian Theology by Alister E. McGrath, fourth edition, pg 22:
Since the Renaissance, the term [Middle Ages] has been used in a rather disparaging sense to meet the somewhat uninteresting period of time separating the intellectual glories of antiquity and their retrieval in the Renaissance.
I honestly can't even form a sentence to display my indignance. Even if he does have a point, what kind of statement is that, anyway? Yeah, so it was middle, so not much intellectual stuff was going on, clearly it must be boring and not studied at all.
Because no one studies the Middle Ages. They're just boring.
Pfeh.
All right, so my Modern Asian History textbook isn't nearly as bad as Christian Theology, which is really just insultingly written -- it's like a self-righteous religious scholar who happened to be on the Blogosphere compiled all of his posts, especially those that got the most flames, and got them published. But East Asia: A New History has a new Western approach of political correctness, which I'm not sure I like. Anyway... to the quote that made me boggle.
From East Asia: A New History by Rhoades Murphy, fourth edition, pg 217:
The emperor became increasingly a figurehead, as he was to be for nearly all the rest of Japanese history. In this longish period the Fujiwara family dominated court politics and even exiled to Kyushu an emperor who had dared to appoint an official of whom they disapproved in 901.
Emphasis mine, because though these sentences are just generally badly written, COME ON. "Longish"? Is that a technical term? Okay, so it's a real word in the dictionary. I don't care that it's a real word. It sounds... just a little too casual to me.
I swear, I won't be shocked if I see Walt Disney refused to let Nikita Khrushchev into Disneyland. PWN! in my Russian History textbook next semester.