Wikipedia Trails: From The Faerie Queene to The Lancasterian System

This week I read about Britomart of The Faerie Queene epic, so I decided to start there:

The Faerie Queene
This is an epic poem written in the 16th century by Edmund Spenser, and is one of the longest epics in the English language. This poem follows knights and inspects various virtues, and was praised by Queen Elizabeth I.

Chastity 
Britomart was the emulation of the virtue chastity, which involves sexual behavior that is considered virtuous by the culture involved. This commonly involves sexual abstinence before marriage and modest clothing, especially in history.

Shakers
One religious movement of the 17th century that took chastity to the extreme were the Shakers, who required celibacy upon admission to the belief system. Children were added to the group by adoption or other measures. This group believed in equal gender roles and women took a leadership role in religious affairs, which is pretty cool.

Lancasterian System
The Shakers practiced a Lancasterian educational system, which involved the older students helping the teacher and providing knowledge to the younger students. A variety of merit-based rewards were used for motivation. This seems fairly in-line with current psychological research on motivation and positive vs. negative rewards.

Count Confalonieri and Silvio Pellico attend a demonstration of the Bell-Lancaster method in the Piedmont, Italy (1860s).

(Wikipedia)

Wikipedia Trails: From Humpty Dumpty to Ancient Rome

Humpty Dumpty Wikipedia Page 
I read a portion of Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll this week and so I wanted to know more about the influence of the Humpty Dumpty nursery rhyme. It turns out the rhyme became popular right around the time that Through the Looking Glass was published. While the rhyme is quite simple, Carroll's adaptation is much more in-depth, in which he is a confusing intellectual who loves to discuss language.

Prosopagnosia Wikipedia Page

It is suggested that Humpty Dumpty has prosopagnosia, due to him saying that he would not be able to recognize Alice because her eyes, nose and mouth were in the same place as everyone else's. Prosopagnosia is the inability to recognize faces, including one's own face. However, other visual abilities and intellectual abilities remain intact. I did not know that this was even a real disorder.

Carbon Monoxide Poisoning Wikipedia Page

An uncommon cause of prosopagnosia turns out to be carbon monoxide poisoning, although the mechanism is not discussed in either Wikipedia page. Carbon monoxide poisioning occurs due to a colorless, odorless gas. This gas can cause minor symptoms such as flu-like symptoms or can lead to seizures or death. 

Ancient Rome Wikipedia Page

I thought it was interesting (and depressing) that carbon monoxide poisoning has been used as a form of suicide as far back as ancient Rome. Indoor fires can cause carbon monoxide poisoning and it is documented that some Roman royalty died due to "sleepiness" from house fires. 

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Wikipedia Trails: From "Emperor's New Clothes" to "Damsel in Distress"

So I just read The Emperor's New Clothes by Hans Christian Andersen so I decided to Wikipedia trails that. Here is the link. This is a story about an emperor who is obsessed with clothes who is swindled by these two guys who say they weave the finest clothes but only people who really know their stuff can see it. So everyone pretends they can see it and the emperor walks naked in a parade, hilarious right?

Ok, so Andersen also wrote the original The Little Mermaid so I followed that link to here. Except it is not the little mermaid you know. She can barely walk because her feet bleed and hurt and her sisters tell her to kill the prince and she does not even end up with him, she ends up being an air-spirit that does good deeds. Crazy right?

Ok, so I guess the little mermaid is mentioned in one of my favorite TV shows, Once Upon A Time, so I followed it here. This show is way cool because it brings common fairytale characters to a modern town called Storybrooke, and all these characters who are used to having magic now have to learn to live in a land without magic while also trying to get home. Way cool. Anyways part of the cool thing about this show is it doesn't focus on traditional themes such as...

The damsel in distress, which is a link I followed to here. And what a journey it was. A damsel in distress is an old school and outdated lady who needs a big macho man to come chop off the dragon's heads. But lately us ladies have been saving ourselves. Yay!

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