Comments | english_majors: T -17 hours, MAN THE TORPEDOES, AHAHAHA, oh god.

coldlikedeath in english_majors

T -17 hours, MAN THE TORPEDOES, AHAHAHA, oh god.

Jan 31, 2012 20:45

Ladies, gentlemen, people who probably have PhDs and therefore know more than me, I come again.

Can someone please explain, in as simple language as is possible:

“This paltry age’s gaudy livery, I love it not.” and aestheticism. What is Oscar Wilde saying here, why? What is he rejecting? Royalty’s finery? (Couldn't be that. excuse the stupidness, my ( Read more... )

Comments 14

kaitlyn142 February 1 2012, 00:56:40 UTC

Yeah, we aren't a homework help community, and I don't think anyone's going to help at all when you haven't read the books.

kondo85 February 1 2012, 01:34:27 UTC

Seriously. And if these are actual homework questions that need clarification (as I suspect the Plato and modernism questions are), you should probably consult your instructor.

kondo85 February 1 2012, 01:35:07 UTC

"You" meaning the OP, obviously.

kaitlyn142 February 1 2012, 02:28:44 UTC

I figured you weren't talking about me. I *have* read Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake. You haven't read Ulysses until you've done a round robin reading of it through the night after being up 24 hours. It finally starts to make perfect sense.

Thread 6

semi_subtle February 1 2012, 01:09:18 UTC

The only one I can really speak to is the Plato-related one, and even then I won't be suuuuper helpful. I can only think of Plato's ideas about reality, that for each and every thing that exists in the world, from a table to a tampon, there is a more perfect, real version that is outside our abilities of perception. Anything that exists in our reality is merely a copy of that, and therefore in a way "fake." Plato particularly frowns upon artists because when they create, they make a copy of a copy, making their work "twice removed from reality." Perhaps this medieval reflection thing relies on similar principles, that since a mirror only shows a copy, it shows something less real and moral? I could be way off the mark, but that's the only thing I could come up with. Sorry I couldn't be more helpful!

semi_subtle February 1 2012, 01:10:31 UTC

All that being said, Kaitlyn's right in the comment above mine. Did you do any of the reading?

coldlikedeath February 1 2012, 17:28:36 UTC

Erm... it's OK, what you wrote (RE Plato) sort of baffled me a bit anyway! But thank you for helping, it might be handy. Yes, but as it turns out, maybe not the right things. Always the retake, isn't there?! *goes to tear hair out*

everypoembreaks February 1 2012, 03:24:05 UTC

Has anyone read Orlando? I have no idea how it was different to Mrs Dalloway or To the Lighthouse... authorial goal? Someone kindly enlighten me?

Read Orlando.

melvillean February 1 2012, 04:54:49 UTC

If you haven't read Ulysses, I can assure you that you don't know what it's about.

everypoembreaks February 1 2012, 13:32:02 UTC

This.

ordinaryfool February 1 2012, 05:06:26 UTC

I think your best bet here is probably going to be a lot of time spent on Wikipedia, Sparknotes, and the like, and then just winging it. If you're a good enough writer and have a general sense of each writer/book, you might be able to fake it enough to pass. Maybe.

But I wouldn't count on your professor being easy on you, regarding the class topics you missed. If you're in college, your professor is certainly not going to go through the class list for every student and think to him/herself things such as, "Oh, it looks like coldlikedeath was gone week 2 of the semester. Better give a free pass on modernism." It just doesn't work that way. It's your responsibility to find out what you missed, and figure out what you need to do to master the material, be it forming study groups with classmates, talking to your professor during office hours, or just penciling in extra study time for those topics. And I'm assuming you have a syllabus and know what the readings were, even for the classes you missed. Your professor will expect you to have read them, ( ... )

coldlikedeath February 1 2012, 17:25:33 UTC

Thanks, and no they weren't but meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh. Orlando, TtL, MD didn't come up. But feminism did. I read the fragment of The Common Reader, and even Plato's Crito, but it turns out A Room of One's Own will be most helpful on that score. Argh. And I would have been tested on Plath and Hughes but he knows I've already studied that, damn.

RE Ulysses, I'm actually going to read it some time, I'm interested. As for Orlando, it was s'posedly a love letter to Sackville West, s'all I know.