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Sun 3 Apr, 2011 03:39 am
Context:
This paper describes the work of Fugro in
support of the hypothesis of Robert Bittlestone, who,
working with geologist John Underhill and classicist
James Diggle, has put forward a new proposal: that the
Paliki peninsula, the westernmost part of Cephalonia,
was ancient Ithaca. Their book, Odysseus Unbound,
gives a detailed description of the evidence supporting
the hypothesis, and the story of its development. There
is one major sticking point: Paliki is joined to the larger
part of the island of Cephalonia, by an isthmus as much
as 180m above sea-level. Figure 1 shows a Landsat 7
image of the islands today, and the Thinia valley fills the
isthmus between Paliki and the rest of Cephalonia. The
new hypothesis requires a channel through the isthmus,
perhaps in the location shown in Figure 2.
@oristarA,
Their book, entitled "Odysseus Unbound"
The title indicates that the story of Odysseus is taken apart, examined and compared with known truths and supporting evidence.
@dadpad,
dadpad wrote:
Their book, entitled "Odysseus Unbound"
The title indicates that the story of Odysseus is taken apart, examined and compared with known truths and supporting evidence.
Thank you.
Could we find another word to replace "unbound"?
Unraveled?
As a title the word unbound in this context is better decribed as a concept. It indicates several meanings rolled into one.
If you read the sentence after "unbound" it describes what the purpouse of the book is.
a detailed description of the evidence supporting
the hypothesis, and the story of its development.
That is essentially what unbound means in this context.
Disected Is the best replacement word i can think of. Unravelled, disentangled, freed and released are words that could possibly be used but to my mind they do not adequatly describe the meaning of unbound.
While i regard DP's comments on the meaning of unbound to be reasonable, i don't think that's the origin of the title. There is a story in Greek mythology about a demi-god named Prometheus, who stole fire from the Gods and gave it to mankind. For that crime, he was chained (bound) to a mountain in the Caucasus Mountains, where every day an eagle would tear out and eat his liver, which would grow back overnight.
The Greek tragedian Aeschylus was believed to have written a play entitled Prometheus Unbound, although modern scholars no longer believe that it was written by him. More than 2000 years later, the English poet Percy Shelley also wrote a play entitled Prometheus Unbound. I suspect the title of this book was inspired by the title of those plays. Otherwise, DP's analysis of the meaning is prefectly reasonable to me.
Excellent!
Thank you both.
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