Jᴀᴄᴜʀᴜᴛᴜ - Tʜᴇ Cᴀsᴛ Oᴜᴛ

This is something I've been wondering about for a while but hadn't gotten around to posting about until now:

How should the first sections of GEoD be divided into chapters?

1. At present I only have on hand my New English Library paperback and my textfile version ... which is much edited and reformatted, so I'm going to ignore it for the moment.

The NEL starts (on p.1) with

PROLOGUE

Excerpt from the speech by Hadi Benotto announcing the discoveries at Dar-es-Balat on the planet of Rakis:

It not only is...

Then (about 3/4 of the way down on p.3), we have (in italics, separated by a blank line above and below)

From the reading by Rebeth Vreeb:

The text (of the reading) following this ("I assure you that I am the book of fate. ...") is set in font of normal size and weight, goes on for a page or so and then ends a little below halfway on p.4. Page 5 is about 1/3 blank space followed by an epigraph ("This morning I was born in a yurt...") in small italics.

So to my way of thinking, the "Prologue" extends from pp.1-4 and Chapter 1 begins on p.5.

2. What I'm calling Chapter 1 then begins on p.5. It describes the flight through the forest by Siona & co-conspirators. The narrative section ends on p.13 with Siona swearing a Fremen-style oath against Leto. This is followed by what looks like two lines of blank space and then the following in italics, separated from what follows it by another blank line:

The following is from the Hadi Benotto translation of the volumes discovered at Dar-es-Balat:

The text that follows is again in normal size & weight font, and goes on for about 3.5 pp. But it's followed (on p. 16) by

—The Journals of Leto II

centered and in boldface. P.17 begins with a longish section ("The following brief dialogue is credited...") in italics, followed by the transcription of an interview between Siona & Moneo, which continues to about a quarter down p.18. This is followed by an unmistakable epigraph (small italic font with larger margins) and what I assume is the beginning of Chapter 2.

3. At the end of the book, should the Hadi Benotto "secret summation" be considered a separate chapter? The introductory text is in italics, but not otherwise in epigraph style.

Are the above consistent with the formatting in everyone else's copies of GEoD?

This isn't a big issue, but where we divide the chapters determines how many there are in total and how we refer to them in citing quotes.

The Prologue is the Hadi Bennotto excerpt announcing the discovery of Dar-es-Balat.

The "I assure you I am the book of fate" bit is a poet, Rebeth Vreeb, at that speach, reading from Leto's Journal.

Chapter one starts with Siona's run through the Forbidden Forrest.

I consider the Hadi Bennotto summary in the back to be an epilogue.



Per my 25 year old Berkly paperback.

OK. How does the formatting look for Ch. 2?

Chapter 2 is a translation from the Journals by Bennotto.

Ch 3 is an excerpt from "The Welbeck Fragment", a conversation between Siona and Moneo.

4 starts with a very long quote from the Stolen Journals as epigraph and the chapter is Leto turning the old Duncan into a grease spot.

The epigraph for chapter 2 starts with "This morning I was born in a Yurt". I think that's the confusing part in the PDF I have. You can't tell where the Rebeth Vreeb reading ends and the Ch 2 epigraph begins.

Since I've skipped Siona's run through the forrest in my summaries, I'm going to make it Chapter 1 and I'm going to make the Hadi/Vrebeth bit 'Chapter 00: Prologue'.

Does that make sense to everyone?

Well, we have a similar thing for Dune Messiah, and that section is indeed entitled Prologue, so it sounds sensible to me.

I have two chapters combined