The last time this was sort of an issue, I censored the word you’re all thinking of right now. I’ve always felt kind of like a hack for wussing out back then, so now that word has returned with a vengeance. For context, I strongly recommend you all read the poem in question if you haven’t already. It’s hilarious and oddly thought-provoking. It is, basically, the lament of a man who blows his load early and blames his penis for failing in relations with a particular woman, when he’s always banged every other woman in town without incident.
As I said, thought-provoking.
Appro of nothing, but this poem also features the triumphant return of my favorite word in English Literature, “swyve.” Way to go, Wilmot.
And now, a stupid behind-the-scenes note because I was just thinking about it today: I refer to strips like these, in my regular art style, as “Molly Strips,” for fairly obvious reasons. Molly Strips always take me around three times longer to actually finish because the art is always a considerable step up. Additionally, while I’ve started drawing all the normal Lit Brick strips 100% digitally for speed, Molly Strips (or anything in my normal style, really) have to be penciled on paper still. Whenever I try and draw in my normal style digitally, it always ends poorly. Which is all a very long way of saying that Molly Strips happen much less frequently these days because they take a lot longer to actually create.
There. Now I’ve successfully distracted you from my use of that word.
Dammit!
6 Comments
Right. The key word is context; to judge any time-period using our rather twisted views on almost anything is silly.
This strip reminded me of a Laverne & Shirley dream episode in which a future rich Squiggy remarks that he had no children because it was just his luck to have married 12 barren women in a row.
We demand linky to that other art.
Oh yes.
And if you mispronounce the word in French, you say “apartment” instead.
I don’t think the poem would read quite the same if that’s what he meant, though. ;D
Don’t worry, John, I think quite a lot of your audience consists of amateur mediævalists (who knows, maybe a professional or two) and lit geeks who already have an understanding of that little thing called “context”.
Of course, some of us are the type of horrible intellectuals who insult others by using words that seem innocuous today, like quaint, nice, feisty, etc. and have been looking forward to poems about scullions swyving with slatterns!
As a medievalist, I find myself more or less immune to “that word.” Chaucer is just so cheerful about his frequent use of “queynte” that it would be silly to take offence. As well, the fact that we take offence at the word in the first place can be blamed on our culture’s view of words referring to bodily functions and sexual acts and organs as taboo. As English literature demonstrates handily, this taboo hasn’t always been in place. Blaming a guy writing in 1680 for “sexism” is just kind of anachronistic. If Wilmot came back to life and published the same poem today, I would probably punch him in the face, but as it is, I can regard him as a seventeenth-century frat boy addicted to sexual boasting and leave it at that.
I like the Molly Strips- mostly because I like the way you draw faces, but also because Molly is freaking hilarious