Endnotes explained

What happens

Themes in this chapter

• Literature and Artifice

  The translator's notes engage with literary devices, translations, and classical references, highlighting the constructed nature of the narrative.

Characters to notice

• Gil Blas

  Referenced as the protagonist whose experiences and reflections are discussed in the translator's notes.

Key passages

• “Should this phrase appear far-fetched in the person of Gil Blas, it may be recollected, that though not much of a student himself, he had waited on students; and might have sucked in, while standing behind their chairs, along with 'fates and destinies, and such old sayings, the sisters three, and such branches of learning,' that exquisitely characteristic Greek metaphor, 'a hedge of teeth.'”

  If a phrase seems unlikely for Gil Blas, remember he wasn't a scholar but learned by listening to students he served, picking up classical references and metaphors.

  Translator defends the plausibility of Gil Blas's knowledge.

• “These wandering priests are at present known in Africa by the name of Marabut. The first gymnosophists of Ethiopia most probably were nothing more.”

  These itinerant priests are now called Marabut in Africa, and the early Ethiopian gymnosophists were likely similar.

  Translator provides historical context for a term in the text.

• “To have substituted, with a slight variation, these two stanzas from Cowley for a translation of the commonplace couplet in the original, will probably not be thought to require any apology. They necessarily involve a change in the consequent reflections of our hero.”

  Replacing a mundane couplet with two stanzas from Cowley, slightly altered, needs no apology, though it changes the hero's subsequent thoughts.

  Translator explains a literary substitution and its effect on the narrative.