Scholastic Progress

So, following long-established Parisian tradition, I have had this very nasty cold for going on 10 days now. The kind where your ribcage hurts from all that coughing.

"But David", I hear you ask, "is this likely to have a negative impact on your learning experience at the Sorbonne?".

Maybe it will, but so far things are going just fine, I think.

 

When interpreting those 19.5/20 scores, please bear in mind that, by constitutional amendment, French teachers are not allowed to give 20/20, certainly not to mere foreigners.

 

If I might be permitted a word of spontaneous elation : BOOYA !!

Book "Review" : "Le Cid" by Pierre Corneille

So, Le Cid, whose real name was obviously le Kid, before he fell into the hands of those lithping Cathtilians, doesn't quite have superhero-level powers, but he's a pretty bada$$ mofo all the same. I thought he was going to go all Hamlet-y on us about avenging the insult to his papa's honor, but heck no - he has polished off that pesky duke before we're even halfway through Act II. Then it's time to go off and fight those dusky Moors to protect the kingdom, home in time for a few laurel wreaths and to deal with rival suitors (because his lady-love, Chimène, has fallen victim to the dramatic requirements of the genre, and though she loves him dearly and no other, is obliged to petition the king to have him killed because see escapade 1 earlier, he killed her papa in a duel, which he clearly had coming to him, and she is generally forced to come up with all kinds of love-thwarting objections to spin out the plot, until thankfully the king himself intervenes and tells her to get over it already, so that the two lovebirds can be united, which is I suppose what makes it a tragicomedy, and here we go with my parenthesis problem again).

Anyway, this is a poor excuse for a book report, but I enjoyed the heck out of Le Cid, and who knew 17th century French drama could be so much fun. 
That dude slapping the older dude in the picture (the infamous "soufflet" that is the McGuffin for the whole piece) is Don Gomès, papa of Chimène, and he gets his comeuppance satisfactorily quickly.

There's also a bunch of technical stuff about switching from regular rhyming couplets to other, more complicated, rhyming schemes, but I figure we will learn about that in class tomorrow.