(urth) New Wolfe Listing on Amazon
"Fernando Q. Gouvêa"
fqgouvea at colby.edu
Wed Sep 3 15:30:44 PDT 2008
Remember that Wolfe has Latro call Sparta "Rope". That's a false
etymology as well, but the idea is that it is one that Latro might have
come up with.
Fernando
Pedro Pereira wrote:
> Another thing is the translation of the word "hoplite". It doesn't mean
> "shield man" and in fact the word does not derive from "shield". This is
> a misuse of the term that has plagued the academia for a long time and
> is now beying droped from use. "Hoplon", "hopla", etc could mean any one
> part of the equipment (armor) of the hoplite or his equipment (armor) as
> a whole. A better translation of "hoplite" would simply be "heavily
> armored infantryman" instead of the term used in Wolfe (shieldman) which
> is a wrong interpretation of the ancient greek meaning of the word. But
> Wolfe ofcourse could not know that since the article that brought the
> academia's attention to this issue was published after the first books
> were published.
--
=============================================================
Fernando Q. Gouvea
Carter Professor of Mathematics
Colby College Editor, MAA FOCUS
5836 Mayflower Hill Editor, MAA Reviews
Waterville, ME 04901 http://mathdl.maa.org/mathDL/19/
http://www.colby.edu/~fqgouvea
We think that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we
are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges.
-- Gene Wolfe, in The Shadow of the Torturer
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