Talk:Rota Fortunae

What it needs to be expanded into

• The article I envision resembles Dance Macabre: it has a discussion of the significance of the Wheel in medieval thought, and it gives a few examples of its occurence in artistic works. Slac speak up! 23:30, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

• I've had a crack at this, trying to include its origins, significance in medieval philosophy and use for political and religious instruction, plus a little bit on its use today - while at the same time attempting to keep it distinct from the page on Fortuna. Pictures need adding, there are some good ones here, plus the one on Fortuna's page. Richard of York, 23 July 2006

• I just thought I would point out that Rota Fortuna does not mean Wheel of Fortune; it doesn't actually mean anything, except maybe, the wheel, fortune. Wheel of Fortune would be Rota Fortunae (or, as in the collapsed form given in the quotation from Carmina Burana, Rota Fortune).76.68.81.223 (talk) 03:45, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Rota Fortuna or Rota Fortunae

Which one is correct? The article said Rota Fortuna for a long time, but now it has changed to Rota Fortunae. It seems that the previous one is Italian (I don't know much in Italian, this is just a guess) and the latter is Latin. I once thought that Rota Fortuna was Latin, and it always baffled me how that was supposed to make grammatical sense. I'm still not sure about this so some confirmation would be nice. --BiT (talk) 01:47, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Rota Fortunae is correct. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.180.49.44 (talk) 21:05, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: not moved. While I can believe that this concept is more often called "[The] Wheel of Fortune" than Rota Fortunae, it is not clear that this concept is the primary usage on wikipedia (though I would note that the other uses are named after this one). There was strong consensus at Talk:Wheel of Fortune#Requested move that there was no primary topic, so I'm going to be bold and redirect "The Wheel of Fortune" to "Wheel of Fortune". DrKiernan (talk) 18:13, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

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Rota Fortunae → The Wheel of Fortune – I understand the appeal of the current title as unambiguous, but The Wheel of Fortune already redirects here and is a more common term for the concept. Usage statistics below as a courtesy to WP:RM. Relisted. Jenks24 (talk) 07:17, 4 November 2012 (UTC) --BDD (talk) 18:25, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Term	Google -wikipedia	Google Scholar	Google Books
"rota fortunae"*	15,800	1,340	3,610
"wheel of fortune" medieval	341,000	3,740	12,100
"wheel of fortune" philosophy	263,000	5,110	11,300

*It's especially important to make sure your results are limited to English for this one.

References to the concept were surprisingly hard to come by in encyclopedias and dictionaries of medievalism or philosophy, but I found Wheel of Fortune used in a Chaucer encyclopedia, a Chaucer critical companion, and a medieval mythology dictionary. I didn't find any references to Rota Fortunae in any source. Finally, of our references refer to Fortune's wheel but not the Rota. --BDD (talk) 18:25, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

• Comment - Interesting that at present The Wheel of Fortune redirects to the medieval concept, while Wheel of Fortune leads to a disamb. There as above enough medievalist sources using the correct genitive singular Latin term wikt:fortunae "of Fortuna": e.g. John Kennedy Toole, Walker Percy, Andrei Codrescu A Confederacy Of Dunces 2004 - Page 44 "As a medievalist Ignatius believed in the rota Fortunae, or wheel of fortune, a central concept in De Consolatione Philosophiae, the philosophical work which had laid the foundation for medieval thought." etc. But given that en.wp often seems to revolve around TV as the centre of the universe how secure is that The Wheel of Fortune redirect to the medieval concept in the first place? In ictu oculi (talk) 01:48, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
  • I should also add that while Rota Fortunae no doubt was used in the original Latin, English translations of Consolation of Philosophy would use the Wheel of Fortune form, and I see a few uses of it in that article—again, none for Rota. WP:UE commands the use of English unless the other form has become more prevalent in reliable sources, which it certainly hasn't in this case. --BDD (talk) 04:28, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
    • @BDD, No, sure that's mainly true, except for Ignatius, more in a second, which is why the above was simply a comment, not support/oppose. Also that section of WP:UE (unlike the diacritics bit below) hasn't been edit-warred by a banned editor and is stable, and I agree with it, I've done Latin-to-English RMs myself. I would certainly support this one if it wasn't for the "The" issue and looming presence of the TV show complicating things. If anything I would go further and make both Wheel of Fortune and The Wheel of Fortune about the medieval concept with hatnotes to the TV show.

Back to Ignatius, the problem here is that fortuna is not fortune, but Fortuna, the goddess. Thomas Mallon In fact: essays on writers and writing 2001 p147 "Ignatius is helpless against the rota Fortunae of the medieval world he once studied: " 'Oh, Fortuna blind heedless goddess.." of course that's the English translator's capitalization there. But it is also traditional to read Fortuna as a name from Chaucer's translation of Boethius's De Consolatione Philosophiae onwards. Albeit Chaucer has Latin "Fortuna" in among English text, where as per the article text block the translation of W.V. Cooper, 1902 at Etext.lib. has "Fortune" English capitalised name.

Really don't know on this one. In ictu oculi (talk) 05:00, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

• Strong oppose you have not shown that "The Wheel of Fortune" primarily means this subject, or that it satisfies WP:THE. Further the redirect The Wheel of Fortune should be retargetted to Wheel of Fortune disambiguation page. At most this should be called Wheel of Fortune (philosophy) or similar, a disambiguated form, not the primary form. -- 65.92.181.190 (talk) 05:42, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The ninth celestial sphere is the zodiac?

The article claims this with no attribution. On the other hand, the Wikipedia article on the celestial spheres never mentions the Zodiac, and says "The planetary spheres were arranged outwards from the spherical, stationary Earth at the centre of the universe in this order: the spheres of the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. In more detailed models the seven planetary spheres contained other secondary spheres within them. The planetary spheres were followed by the stellar sphere containing the fixed stars; other scholars added a ninth sphere to account for the precession of the equinoxes, a tenth to account for the supposed trepidation of the equinoxes, and even an eleventh to account for the changing obliquity of the ecliptic.["

I have never seen the zodiac listed as a separate sphere before. This claim should be backed by something! GeneCallahan (talk) 17:00, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

Improve references

I added a Refimprove tag and a Primary sources tag to the top of this article because it has few references, and what it does have are almost entirely primary sources. If you are able to, please help! Tkbrett (talk) 04:57, 5 May 2018 (UTC)