feetsWhorl

Re Nutria's excellent post: Yes! Time to analyze enlightenments and mythic linkages. I wouldn't pin the lame foot on Claudius alone. There is a long, long Western tradition of the symbolic wounded foot/wounded thigh. Think about the Fisher King. Or one-sandaled Jason. Or Sevarian! The wound seems nearly always to refer to impotence, and the monarch who bears it is symbolic of the wounded land; to heal it/him (as some of the Arthurian knights attempted to do in their travels) is to heal sterility/barrenness. His leg's new wholeness is quite explicitly a symbolic healing with Sevarian, who is clearly, by the end, a mythic figure. And, as Silk becomes more and more the designated Savior, his lameness stands in for the dysfunctional Whorl. Wolfe's having had polio as a child has got to have made him super-aware of the tradition. I wonder how it will figure in the new books---or do you think Wolfe will abandon Silk in favor of a new generation? Oh no! Nutria, could you track down a root for Chrasmology? I'm sure you're right, though. -alga- Questions or problems to whorl-owner at lists.best.com