Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 46

[cahn]

Background: The kids' school has a topic for "Unit" every trimester that a lot of their work (reading, writing, some math) revolves around. These topics range from time/geographic periods ('Colonial America') to geography ('Asia') to science ('Space') to social science ('Business and Economics'). (I have some issues with this way of doing things, but that's a whole separate post.) Anyway, for Reasons, they have had to come up with a new topic this year, and E's 7/8 class is doing "World Fairs" as their new topic.

Me: I know E's teacher is all about World Fairs and I know she is great and will do a good job. But I feel like if we had a different teacher who wasn't so into World Fairs, they wouldn't do such a good job and another topic would be better.
Me: Like... the Enlightenment!
D: Heh, you could teach that! But you'd have to restrain yourself from making everything about Frederick the Great.
Me: But that's the thing! Everyone does relate to each other in this time period! Voltaire -- and his partner Émilie du Châtelet, who was heavily involved in the discourse of conservation of energy and momentum -- well, I've told you Voltaire had a thing with Fritz -- and then there's Empress Maria Theresa, who went to war with him a few times -- and Catherine the Great --
D, meditatively: You know --
Me: *am innocently not warned even though this is the same tone of voice that is often followed by, say, a bad pun*
D: -- it's impressive how everyone from this 'the Great' family is so famous!
Me: *splutters*
D, thoughtfully: But of course there's probably selection bias, as the ones who aren't famous don't get mentioned. You never see 'Bob the Great' in the history books...
Me: *splutters more*

Comments

Literary Chat

[selenak]

LOL, I once read Lady Chatterley (in German translation) and did find that boring, though I've always heard the big Lawrence novel to read was "Sons and Lovers" and Chatterley just got famous because of the ban. (And decades later the trial.) Oh, and one of the many incredibly geeky things Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes did was naming their first born child, a daughter, "Frieda" after Mrs. Lawrence aka Frieda von Richthofen (yes, a cousin of the Baron), because as students they had had an intense Lawrence phase.

Blake: anyone who sees and talks to the Prophet Ezekiel as a boy would fit more with the Romantics than with the Enlightenment, but the Romantics would still go...? Mind you, I seem to recall Blake and his wife hung out with Mary Wollstonecraft (the feminist pioneer, mother of Mary Shelley) for a while and through her also knew Mary Shelley's Dad William Godwin, which would put them on the revolutionary or at least progressive side of thought in the late 18th century.

I must admit I still haven't read Gulliver proper, just the (presumably very bowlderized) edition for kids I was given as a child. But I just thought of another 18th century author from the early part of said century whose most famous work you may have read (also in edited for kids version) - Daniel Defoe, i.e. Robinson Crusoe. (I did read the edited for kids Robinson as a child as well. But! I also tackled Moll Flanders as an adult. And I've been meaning to get around to his Plague journal. Also, I just found out as a young man he was a follower of Jemmy's and participated in that doomed attempt to topple James II and make Jemmy King, escaping to France just in time.

Re: Literary Chat

[mildred_of_midgard]

I definitely read both Gulliver and Robinson Crusoe in bowdlerized for children format on my own, circa 6th grade, but they were never assigned reading. Wow, the Great Illustrated Classics covers are bringing back *memories*; I owned a bunch of these, and some of them I read over and over again.

I have a memory of tackling the actual Gulliver's Travels too at the same age, but either I'm misremembering or else it was way over my head--there were a lot of books I "read" beginning to end, but didn't exactly get a lot out of them. I read above my reading level a lot.

Re: Literary Chat

[cahn]

Ha, I did not know that about Plath and Hughes! Probably because of not reading Lawrence, lol.

I also did notice a lot of Defoe in my Norton! We did not read any Defoe in class (my teacher really doesn't seem to have been super fond of the 18th century, or maybe it's that the 18th C entries are mostly prose and he preferred poetry -- most of what I remember reading from that class is poetry, although obviously there were exceptions like Swift), but I am pretty sure I a kids version of Robinson Crusoe way back when which I remember very little about.

Totally random: I'm also remembering that year we had a take-home essay test (we were given something like 3 days to complete it, but could work on it anytime within those three days) where we had to cast Hamlet with the writers we were studying, and I cast Swift as Prince Hamlet. (Definitely the best essay prompt I got in high school!) I don't remember any of my other casting, or even what centuries we had to work with -- I may have to go see if I still have that test somewhere.