"In any case, there is a world of difference between the sophisticated command of vocabulary and tradition necessary of to read Virgil or Keats, and the pragmatic use of written documents to validate legal rights or social position." (Innes, "Memory, Orality, and Literacy in Early Medieval Society," Past and Present 158).
...Sometimes you're reading along in an academic journal article, and it's all very subtle and nuanced, but rather dull, and then you come across a statement and you wake up and go, "no sh**!!!" Keats I can do, but the tax code I cannot. By the way, did you know that the tax code has the same "lexile" level, or complexity, as Hume and Kant? Complexity has little to do with actual worth--or perhaps the relationship is inverse. I guess that's why I never trusted Mansfield and Derrida.
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Clarification--I don't actually like Keats. Just in case Emily thought I did. I like some Romantic/19th century novelists, but none of the poets, unless they're on something.
Brianna, you go girl. Be true to your own likes and dislikes. Personally, I enjoy Keats, but he's a bit too popular these days. I'm on the fence about Tennyson. (I am mad at Anne of Green Gables for coopting his best poem 'the Lady of Shallot.')
Michaela, surely you like Byron. He was definitely on something.
Moreover, he was once famously described as "mad, bad and dangerous to know"-a phrase which I feel could just as easily be applied to you.
I'm afraid "mad" is the only characteristic that can be properly attributed to me.
And, no, I don't like Byron. He was a sexist pig. I like Coleridge.
Coleridge was a sexist pig too. Everyone else is free to like as many Romantics as they choose. My BS meter just can't handle them.
You're so tolerant ;-) Just like me.
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