kinbote
Noun
Meaning
kinbote (plural kinbotes)
(obsolete) A fine paid to the kin of the victim of a crime.
Related terms
Examples
After Shade was murdered, Kinbote acquired the manuscript, including some variants, and has taken it upon himself to oversee the poem's publication, telling readers that it lacks only line 1000.
He expanded this essay into a book in which he also argues that, in order to trigger Shade's poem, Hazel Shade 's ghost induced Kinbote to recount his Zemblan delusions to Shade.
Both authors recount many earlier events, Shade mostly in New Wye and Kinbote in New Wye and in Europe, especially the "distant northern land" of Zembla.
Kinbote quotes the passage but does not recognize it, as he says he has access only to an inaccurate Zemblan translation of the play "in his Timonian cave", and in a separate note he even rails against the common practice of using quotations as titles.
"Shadeans" maintain that John Shade wrote not only the poem, but the commentary as well, having invented his own death and the character of Kinbote as a literary device.