2011-10-13
Explanation
This comic contrasts how the same story is framed in a modern academic setting versus how it was originally told centuries ago. In the top panel, a literature professor reads to his students from a book, describing it in dense academic language: "This story is about the shift in valuation of individual wealth vis-a-vis the transcendental in a post-plague Europe." In the bottom panel, labeled "600 years earlier," a medieval storyteller is telling the same tale to children in far more direct terms: "This story is about how if you don't put coins out for elves, they'll fuck you in the night."
The joke skewers how literary academia transforms simple, crude folk tales into impenetrable scholarly analysis. The original stories were blunt, practical, and often vulgar -- designed to scare people into following social customs. But centuries of academic reinterpretation have buried the raw, entertaining originals under layers of jargon about economic shifts and transcendental philosophy. The comic suggests that something vital (and hilarious) is lost in this translation.
The votey has the professor saying: "Anyway, welcome to the English department. Every day we'll poison your love of books a little more." This is a pointed meta-joke about how studying literature academically can drain the joy out of reading, turning thrilling stories into dry analytical exercises -- a common complaint among literature students.