Quote:
Originally Posted by katezbox
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Boomer - I like your book club idea where no one needs to read the book. Somehow book clubs always make me feel as if I am back in HS English with Sister Mary Whomever telling us that the author meant this when he wrote that. As if a woman who never had sex could understand Fitzgerald or Hemingway!...............................
k
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Hi Kate,
It was not just Sister Mary Whomever. The public school teachers did not get it either.
It was my senior year in high school. I was in the Class of 19
. Our English teacher was regaling us with all her knowledge of Geoffrey Chaucer's
Canterbury Tales.
The Wife of Bath was a character in the tales. And the Wife of Bath was described as having a space between her two front teeth. And our English teacher said that a space between the two front teeth meant that the person was destined to travel far.
And I believed my English teacher.
But then I went to college, and it was
Canterbury Tales time once more, and the Wife of Bath was right there, and she still had that space between her two front teeth.
And I thought I knew all about what that space meant, having believed my high school English teacher.
Wellllll, guess what I learned in college.
I learned that the space between the two front teeth of the Wife of Bath in the
Canterbury Tales meant that she was over-sexed. Those were the words of the professor anyway.
I have never researched this important piece of information. So I really do not know who was right. But I do know one thing for sure. You have to watch out for people who teach English. You just never know what they might tell you.
Boomer