Fencing Master Research Articles

The scholar and the fencing master: The exchanges between Joseph Justus Scaliger and Ludolph van Ceulen on the circle quadrature (1594–1596)

In Chapter 21 of Vanden Circkel (On the Circle) [Van Ceulen, 1596], the arithmetic teacher and fencing master Ludolph van Ceulen published his analysis of 16 propositions which had been submitted to him by an anonymous “highly learned man”. In this paper, the author of the propositions will be identified as the classicist and humanist Joseph Justus Scaliger (1540-1609), who lived in the city of Leiden, just like Van Ceulen. The whole Chapter 21 of Van Ceulen’s Vanden Circkel turns out to be a criticism of Scaliger’s Cyclometrica (1594), a work which includes a false circle quadrature and many other incorrect theorems. The exchanges between Van Ceulen and Scaliger are analyzed in this paper and related to difference in social status and to different approaches to mathematics.

Making the implicit explicit for successful communication: pragmatic differences between English and Spanish observable in the translation of verbs of movement

This article considers the translation of verbs of movement within texts between English and Spanish in general and includes a closer study of the English motion and manner verbs in The Fencing Master, the English translation of Arturo Pérez-Reverte's novel El maestro de esgrima. This study was originally sparked off by the following observation: "Spanish translators omit manner information about half of the time, whereas English translators actually add manner to the Spanish original in almost a quarter of their translations". (Slobin, 1996/99: 212). After considering relevant theoretical issues related to observations in early Translation Studies, studies within Pragmatics and finally within Cognitive Linguistics, I turn to the novel itself and focus on the differing methods employed for dealing with the verbs of movement in the translation of this novel and classify them. This article argues that Slobin's observation above can be modified as we conclude that it is for pragmatic reasons that the English translation explicitly states what is in fact implicit in the Spanish original.

Philosophy of a Fencing Master

(1935). Philosophy of a Fencing Master. The Journal of Health and Physical Education: Vol. 6, No. 3, pp. 20-23.

"THE FENCING MASTER," BY GARI MELCHERS

"THE FENCING MASTER," BY GARI MELCHERS

XXVI. Some Observations on Judicial Duels, as practised in Germany. In a Letter from R. L. Pearsall (of Willsbridge), Esq., to Sir Henry Ellis, K.H., F.R.S., Secretary

My attention was drawn towards the present subject by an old manuscript book which I saw, some years ago, in the Royal Library at Munich. It was dated A.D. 1400, and contained a collection of Drawings on vellum, executed by or under the direction of one Paulus Kail, who filled the post of Master of Defence to the then existing Duke of Bavaria. These appeared to have been designed for the use of the Duke, and purported to display the parades and stratagems employed in combats with the different weapons which were in use at the beginning of the 15th century. It seemed, however, to have been more than a mere fencing master's instruction book; for the drawings were accompanied by written remarks, which gave it rather the air of a book of directions as to the conduct of Judicial Combats, showing any one likely to be engaged therein, how he might bring matters to a prosperous issue.