Dionysus

Andrew Mason · 09 Dec 2010, 20:04 · from 2010-December.txt.gz

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From: andrew.mason53 at googlemail.com (Andrew Mason)
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2010 20:04:55 +0000
Subject: (urth) Dionysus
Message-ID: <AANLkTi=Ftib2Zw4zrxDuFfJkp7hBQ0MVvwEvZckEZ2CP at mail.gmail.com>

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:

>
> But do recall, please, that Wolfe is an American writer. (I almost
> wrote "an _essentially_ American writer," but realized that, while
> that is my impression, I have no real data to back it up.) As such, he
> might be expected to use "vine" in the American sense.

Oh, of course. But the question here is not how he understands 'vine'
in isolation, but how he understands 'Dionysus, god of the vine'. He
presumably knows enough about the history of the matter to realise
that this is specifically the grape vine.

(Tangent: I do in fact notice occasional British-seeming things
turning up in Wolfe's work. One that I can recall is in 'The Story of
the Student and his Son'. That story turns on a pun between 'thesis'
and 'Theseus'. But the student is clearly a doctoral student, given
the length of time he is taking over it, and Americans normally speak
of doctoral dissertations, not theses. There are other examples which
I can't recall right now.)
> --

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