Tea at Trianon: Trigger Warnings for Fairy Tales?

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, November 5, 2019

Trigger Warnings for Fairy Tales?

From The Daily Mail:

University students have been given 'trigger warnings' about potentially upsetting scenes in classic fairytales. Lecturers admitted students were cautioned about 'violent material' contained in the famous children's stories by the Brothers Grimm. Their tales include Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Hansel and Gretel and Little Red Riding Hood. So-called 'trigger warnings' are part of a growing trend which sees undergraduates warned about content they could find disturbing. Last night Dr Stuart Waiton, a senior sociology lecturer at Abertay University in Dundee, said that 'the more we make trigger warnings the norm, the more we risk infantilising these adults'. Glasgow University gave details of a course it runs in modern languages and cultures in response to a freedom of information request. (Read more.)

julygirl said...: The generation of the 30's and 40's have been called The Greatest Generation", but we must look at what formed them and strengthened them....wars, ecological disasters, economic disasters and being reared by parents who themselves grew tough by living through tough times.; November 5, 2019 at 11:27:00 AM EST