Ouen and Dorcas and ??

David Stockhoff · 07 Dec 2010, 01:59 · from 2010-December.txt.gz

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From: dstockhoff at verizon.net (David Stockhoff)
Date: Mon, 06 Dec 2010 20:59:15 -0500
Subject: (urth) Ouen and Dorcas and ??
In-Reply-To: <4CFD9002.7020407 at io.com>
References: <AANLkTindDeG=GGZi=jJjHCzfaF3vtP-u1UOSWakQRU3o at mail.gmail.com>	<CAA38081-65BF-4B32-9DE7-06ADD7B38BA3 at liftingfaces.com>
	<4CFD9002.7020407 at io.com>
Message-ID: <4CFD94F3.6070801 at verizon.net>

Possibly. My reading of Mist was that Wolfe was simply mimicking even 
more closely what editors of Greek and Latin, through the centuries, 
actually did and still do---since Latro writes in Latin or Greek.

It's the same joke, but a different treatment. So you'd expect a 
difference, regardless of the absence of notes. Besides, some jokes are 
better left unexplained

On 12/6/2010 8:38 PM, Jeff Wilson wrote:
> On 12/6/2010 12:34 PM, Ryan Dunn wrote:
>>
>> On Dec 6, 2010, at 1:31 PM, Andrew Mason wrote:
>>
>>> I think we know it's -cas, because Ouen says his mother was called
>>> Cas, but the picture he has is of Dorcas. Also - though this is a clue
>>> only for us, the readers, not for Severian - the chapter in which the
>>> old boatman talks about his wife is called 'Dorcas', although that
>>> name is mentioned nowhere in it.
>>
>>
>> Do we know whether Severian titled the chapters of his own tome? I 
>> had never thought of that.
>
> The translator's notes in _Soldier of the Mist_ detail how he uses the 
> first words of each entry as best he can tell as the chapter title out 
> of a lack of any other identification within the manuscript. The lack 
> of a similar practice mentioned in the otherwise similar length notes 
> for the BOTNS + URTH suggest it had chapter demarcations, though they 
> may ot have been quite so lurid ("The Key to the Universe") in the 
> original tongue.
>
> There is also the possibility that the book has passed thou other 
> hands and been copied with errors and elisions and deliberate changes 
> over the eons of future history past.
>
>


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