New Wolfe Listing on Amazon

Fernando Q. Gouvêa · 03 Sep 2008, 22:30 · from 2008-September.txt.gz

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From: fqgouvea at colby.edu (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?=22Fernando_Q=2E_Gouv=EAa=22?=)
Date: Wed, 03 Sep 2008 18:30:44 -0400
Subject: (urth) New Wolfe Listing on Amazon
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Message-ID: <48BF1014.4030109 at colby.edu>

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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