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professors teach to their opinion i took a shakespeare course at university where we were asked to read troilus and cressida and compare it to its source troil

professors teach to their opinion i took a shakespeare course at university where we were asked to read troilus and cressida and compare it to its source troilus and criseyde by chaucer i wrote that i disliked the piece because it just read like someone who recently got burned in love venting irrationally, noting that i liked shakespeare's version more because he gives the last word to pandarus(o) who uses it to comically complain about his health and i felt this beautifully subverted the assumed tragedy the characters felt subject to in their stories.. woe is me! i failed the exam frustrated i went looking for evidence to defend my claim(i).. though contrary to the linked comic i did find some interesting notes first off chaucer was a source for shakespeare, but hardly the source of the work chaucer's main source was boccaccio's il filastrato.. which was based off an earlier version known as le roman de troie by benoît de sainte-maure but the interesting bit comes from boccaccio's version(ii) because the story itself is only 8 cantos long, even the wikipedia page says the work itself is only 8 cantos long!(iii), but there is an additional canto, a ninth canto, wherein the author, boccaccio, addresses the reader and apologises for writing the poem and states he's unsure where it came from but asserts that he was recently dumped (o) http://shakespeare.mit.edu/troilus_cressida/full.html http://shakespeare.mit.edu/troilus_cressida/full.html (i) https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2012/01/06 https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2012/01/06 (i/2) https://store.penny-arcade.com/products/agree-with-me-tee https://store.penny-arcade.com/products/agree-with-me-tee (ii) http://www.yorku.ca/inpar/filostrato_griffin.pdf http://www.yorku.ca/inpar/filostrato_griffin.pdf (iii) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Il_Filostrato https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Il_Filostrato front page of reddit right now.. https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/5mr6ws/shakespeare_in_school/ https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/5mr6ws/shakespeare_i... ;P

GrinningFool 10y ago
Do you think it would have ended the same failed exam if you did that research first and included it in your interpretation?
- zorked 10y ago
  My thoughts exactly. He had a good intuition, but teachers want substance not opinion - as they should.
  - int_19h 10y ago
    It sounds like this is a case of something where substance is opinion; or at least the established and agreed-upon subset of it.
- justifier 10y ago
  there's more to the story.. lie by ommission the course was set up that we would read a work and then write a one page response in class here is where i voiced my distaste for chaucer 'creating', as was presented to our class, this story while appreciating shakey's subversion of the material this garnered the 'f' for my opinions about love forlorned then at the end of each four week period we would, in lieu of exams, choose one work to 'dive deeper on' and write a longer piece i chose triolus because it was the one piece i got such a low score on while 'going deeper' i ended up finding, and reading, bocaccio and sainte-maure and wrote about how all four are similar and different and how these comparisons related to my original, correct ;P, intuition i got a 'd' with complaints to the effects of 'stick to the course material' and 'just drop it' i think my axe grinding became the professor's honing stone, which is unfortunate that such a circumstance can occur in an as advertised educational environment
  - GrinningFool 10y ago
    Thanks for the additional context - though it's disappointing to hear. Seems the point of teaching this kind of thing should be to encourage people to explore their own interpretations. Having a fixed path for the student to travel seems counterproductive.
  - justifier 10y ago
    i went back and found this old entry from my university days and it turns out i only used the three works: shakespeare, chaucer and boccaccio; as basis for comparison in the paper, stead all four
jjoonathan 10y ago
Why did you omit capital letters and periods and misuse ellipses in a post which attacks academic English? These choices would be annoying enough in any post but for this one in particular they undermine your credibility.
- thaumaturgy 10y ago
  You've just called into question a race car driver's driving ability because you saw them not use their turn signal. Capitalization and punctuation shouldn't be your signals for quality in a comment on Chaucer and Shakespeare and literary history. I'm demonstrating one natural outcome of your criticism here by using proper punctuation, capitalization, and other grammatical minutiae while knowing not the damnedest thing about the quality or literary history of Troilus and Cressida.
  - jjoonathan 10y ago
    > You've just called into question a race car driver's driving ability because you saw them not use their turn signal. Note that I used the word "choice," indicating that I understood it to be a conscious decision rather than a lack of competence. > Capitalization and punctuation shouldn't be your signals for quality in a comment on Chaucer and Shakespeare and literary history. What makes you think I used them as exclusive signals? My claim wasn't that bad grammar made the parent post bad, it was that bad grammar had a negative contribution towards the overall credibility of the post. > I'm demonstrating one natural outcome of your criticism... Your reading comprehension might leave something to be desired, but the fact that a weak building may be built on a strong foundation does not imply that a strong building may have a weak foundation. To be clear: I am referring to your "example," not justifier's post, because I do not believe that justifier has a weak foundation, at least not with respect to grammar, which brings us back to the question of why. Purposefully employing bad grammar in a post about English is a signal both that the writer holds strong and nontraditional opinions about English and that (s)he lacks the persuasive tact to fight one battle at a time. The way I see it, either quality alone could have led to a justified failing grade on an essay for reasons that have nothing to do with the veracity of its core claim.
NolF 10y ago
Were your grades corrected with the added information? I think grading matrixes would be well served it they assess the writing ability of the person. That is, how well can they justify their opinion with quotes and sources, rather than what the interpretation outcome itself.
- justifier 10y ago
  the grade stayed, i did well enough in the course that this exam was pretty negligent the bigger issue was that this interaction negatively affected my relationship with the professor.. who was unaware of il filastrato as a source for chaucer?!, and unimpressed that i read two supplemental works that were beyond the scope of the course syllabus also frustratingly tainted my association with shakespeare since whenever someone talks about academic shakespeare i immediately want to monologue
matthewowen 10y ago
You got an F because no one cares if you liked the text or not. That's not what academic literary criticism is about.

GrinningFool 10y ago

Do you think it would have ended the same failed exam if you did that research first and included it in your interpretation?

zorked 10y ago
My thoughts exactly. He had a good intuition, but teachers want substance not opinion - as they should.
- int_19h 10y ago
  It sounds like this is a case of something where substance is opinion; or at least the established and agreed-upon subset of it.
justifier 10y ago
there's more to the story.. lie by ommission the course was set up that we would read a work and then write a one page response in class here is where i voiced my distaste for chaucer 'creating', as was presented to our class, this story while appreciating shakey's subversion of the material this garnered the 'f' for my opinions about love forlorned then at the end of each four week period we would, in lieu of exams, choose one work to 'dive deeper on' and write a longer piece i chose triolus because it was the one piece i got such a low score on while 'going deeper' i ended up finding, and reading, bocaccio and sainte-maure and wrote about how all four are similar and different and how these comparisons related to my original, correct ;P, intuition i got a 'd' with complaints to the effects of 'stick to the course material' and 'just drop it' i think my axe grinding became the professor's honing stone, which is unfortunate that such a circumstance can occur in an as advertised educational environment
- GrinningFool 10y ago
  Thanks for the additional context - though it's disappointing to hear. Seems the point of teaching this kind of thing should be to encourage people to explore their own interpretations. Having a fixed path for the student to travel seems counterproductive.
- justifier 10y ago
  i went back and found this old entry from my university days and it turns out i only used the three works: shakespeare, chaucer and boccaccio; as basis for comparison in the paper, stead all four

jjoonathan 10y ago

Why did you omit capital letters and periods and misuse ellipses in a post which attacks academic English? These choices would be annoying enough in any post but for this one in particular they undermine your credibility.

thaumaturgy 10y ago
You've just called into question a race car driver's driving ability because you saw them not use their turn signal. Capitalization and punctuation shouldn't be your signals for quality in a comment on Chaucer and Shakespeare and literary history. I'm demonstrating one natural outcome of your criticism here by using proper punctuation, capitalization, and other grammatical minutiae while knowing not the damnedest thing about the quality or literary history of Troilus and Cressida.
- jjoonathan 10y ago
  > You've just called into question a race car driver's driving ability because you saw them not use their turn signal. Note that I used the word "choice," indicating that I understood it to be a conscious decision rather than a lack of competence. > Capitalization and punctuation shouldn't be your signals for quality in a comment on Chaucer and Shakespeare and literary history. What makes you think I used them as exclusive signals? My claim wasn't that bad grammar made the parent post bad, it was that bad grammar had a negative contribution towards the overall credibility of the post. > I'm demonstrating one natural outcome of your criticism... Your reading comprehension might leave something to be desired, but the fact that a weak building may be built on a strong foundation does not imply that a strong building may have a weak foundation. To be clear: I am referring to your "example," not justifier's post, because I do not believe that justifier has a weak foundation, at least not with respect to grammar, which brings us back to the question of why. Purposefully employing bad grammar in a post about English is a signal both that the writer holds strong and nontraditional opinions about English and that (s)he lacks the persuasive tact to fight one battle at a time. The way I see it, either quality alone could have led to a justified failing grade on an essay for reasons that have nothing to do with the veracity of its core claim.

NolF 10y ago

Were your grades corrected with the added information? I think grading matrixes would be well served it they assess the writing ability of the person. That is, how well can they justify their opinion with quotes and sources, rather than what the interpretation outcome itself.

justifier 10y ago
the grade stayed, i did well enough in the course that this exam was pretty negligent the bigger issue was that this interaction negatively affected my relationship with the professor.. who was unaware of il filastrato as a source for chaucer?!, and unimpressed that i read two supplemental works that were beyond the scope of the course syllabus also frustratingly tainted my association with shakespeare since whenever someone talks about academic shakespeare i immediately want to monologue

matthewowen 10y ago

You got an F because no one cares if you liked the text or not. That's not what academic literary criticism is about.