Urth Net
Lupine defined
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Pardon my ignorance, but what is "Lupine"? I just picked up a copy of There Are Doors at the used paperback store the other day, and it is described as "loop-the-Lupine". I've heard you guys talk about Lupine on the list before.
Thanks,
-Steve
No need to apologize. If you don't ask you can't learn. (However, if you do ask and I answer, you risk an overdose of pedantry.)
I was originally going to send a private reply to your message, but then I thought there might be others reading this discussion list that had been wondering the same thing but were afraid to ask.
Lupine means wolf-like, it is an adjective derived from the Latin word for wolf lupus (similar adjectival forms are ursine: bear-like, vulpine: fox-like and murine: mouse-like; the latter is used almost exclusively in scientific literature).
It is a scholarly pun on Gene Wolfe's surname. (It may have been coined by John Clute; does anyone know?) On this discussion list it is used to mean writing in the style or manner of Gene Wolfe, especially something written in a particularly convoluted, elliptical, ambiguous way.
It is used in combined forms such as "loop-the-Lupine" which you mention (I imagine this means "even more convoluted than Wolfe's writing usually is") and Dan'l Danehy-Oakes excellent recent coinage Lupiverse, meaning the universe of discourse of a particular work by Gene Wolfe.
William Ansley
*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun.