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This is literally being taught to read and gain knowledge from books (see the next line), but it’s also a metaphor for putting things behind us and moving on. So we’re told to get knowledge from what other people have said rather than think for ourselves, but if you’re smart you can use that knowledge to innovate (which is what Butterfly does with his rap heritage).

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Shania’s known for her celebration of traditional gender roles, but here she’s actually being quite subversive: clothing that makes her “feel like a woman” involves not only short skirts (traditionally feminine) but also men’s shirts (traditionally masculine).

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What is this?

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Shania’s known for her celebration of traditional gender roles (though she can occasionally be quite subversive), and here she shows that once again: in her ideal of sex, it’s the guy who’s the active partner and the woman who’s passive.

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The annotated passage to which this refers can be found here.

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Morley jokingly implies that if choking (sobbing without tears) had been counted, this index would have been even longer (the book itself is less than a hundred pages long). This level of detail also presents the index as a piece of serious scholarship, making its mockery of Mackenzie all the more biting.

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Many of Shania’s lyrics celebrate old-fashioned courtship and romantic values. Here, she’s advising a hopeful suitor to be chivalrous. This might not be the most feminist message, and we might also question whether Shania’s correct in speaking for all women here, many of whom might find old-fashioned romance off-putting.

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Probably Philip Sidney’s most famous quotation, from A Defense of Poesy:

… the poet, he nothing affirmeth, and therefore never lieth.

This is one of the most insidious lies about poetry ever circulated. The very fact that the poet pretends not to affirm, and that we believe her/him, makes her/his lies all the more nasty and dangerous. This poem is full of lies. How, knowing that I’m a poet, is Shania ever to trust me as a lover?

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This is ironic. I actually love Arcade Fire.

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Err … hate to point out the obvious, but wasn’t it Adam?

Well, no, not exactly. ‘Gentleman’ in medieval times had a more specific meaning than it does today, and referred to a particular class of society: gentlemen were members of the gentry, inheritors of land, and as such had rights which yeomen or peasants didn’t. The point is that in Adam and Eve’s time the concept of a gentleman couldn’t exist: what’s the point of owning land when there’s no one to challenge your right to it anyway?

This little rhyme played an important part in the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, because it suggested that the natural order of humans should follow the first family – i.e. all should be equal. The problem with this is that Adam, in a way, is still the gentleman. The husband in Genesis is still given authority over the wife; there is still, in the first family, a social hierarchy, one which puts the father first, then the mother, then the eldest son and then the youngest. This is one of the reasons Cain gets so enraged when Abel’s sacrifice is preferred to his own: Abel’s the youngest son, so God’s preference goes against the social order. Already social hierarchy’s starting to diverge from God’s authority … which seems to bring the argument full circle, and support the peasants again.

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‘Delving’ is digging, and Eve’s not spinning around like Kylie: she’s spinning fabric on a spindle. After being thrown out of Eden, Adam and Eve were condemned to work for their living, so we can pinpoint the setting early on in Genesis, probably before (spoiler alert) Cain had killed Abel, but after the Fall.

So what? Well, this is the first family: the poet’s invoking a natural state, before the birth of civilisation. Let’s read on to find out what s/he’ll do with it.

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