any reader would note the notable lack of a funny bone here recently (or, for that matter, the lack of any bone.) and hence, my continued dependence on my tutors to provide funny, half-funny, or outright unfunny quotes continues -

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the provenance of the geography myth:

it does seem as though mr miles was drawing on a long and honourable tradition when he made (makes?) fun of mr white and the class sitting next door looking at pretty pictures on the OHP while we sat in our seats scribbling our hands off...

this popped up in class a few weeks ago (obscure bits underscored) -

"among the medieval schools of learning the rivalry between rhetoric and grammar was always very intense. the rhetoricians would argue that when the serpent tempted eve in the garden of eden he invented the conditional and the future tense. grammarians would rebut this by saying that the serpent was merely engaged in the art of rhetoric - the use of argument to convince - the corollary being, of course, that grammar was the superior form of learning.

this is of course reminiscent of the debate that takes place between the history faculty and the honour school of colouring-in... though everyone knows that we are still better than geographers."

***
last week has been life-changing. i inadvertently argued that history was a form of literature in an essay. (shit.) and then i've been reading on the historians of the Annales school lately (well, actually, just yesterday, given the tightness of schedules) for my historiography class and fernand braudel strikes up an interesting chord.

are we just prisoners of our destiny (in braudel's words, enfermé dans un destin) with geography, society, and mentalités becoming themselves Lords of history?

***
that was a very vague attempt at appeasing the murderous mob now gathered within the tagboard, which i shall now abandon because i have to write an essay on the decline of sweden in the 17th century, which i do not think happened. (which i think did not happen? where is the nuance in what?)

please!

pause for thought of the rhetoricians, grammarians, the annalistes, and the king charles xii of sweden. and note: there are no swiss guards to murder here, and no king to dethrone, and no constitution to suspend. (it was said that in 1792 the blood could not be scrubbed off the steps of the tuileries.)

therefore, pause and think of louis xvi too, the tragic and well-meaning monarch appointed by God but abandoned by the people.