Structure
The structure of the poem is a mixture of two popular medieval allegorical elements: the Wheel of Fortune and the Ptolemaic universe. As mentioned above, the structure of the poem centers around three Wheels of Fortune (past, present and future). The first two wheels are visible to the narrator, while Providence leaves the third one veiled. Providence explains that the past and future wheels do not rotate, but the wheel for the present is still in motion, its outcome uncertain. On each wheel the narrator sees people from classical or Castilian history at varying levels of fortune. These different levels of fortune are represented by the Ptolemaic structure. Each wheel represents its own miniature of the Ptolemaic universe (the seven known celestial bodies with their allegorical connotations). The Ptolemaic element dominates the narrative structure of the poem, as the narration advances in order through the rings of the various planets. To sum up: We three Wheels of Fortune; each Wheel has seven rings representing a planet and its virtues; but, only two of the Wheels are visible to the narrator. On each ring there appear historical personages who either exemplify or lack the given virtue.
Read more about this topic: Laberinto De Fortuna
Famous quotes containing the word structure:
“It is difficult even to choose the adjective
For this blank cold, this sadness without cause.
The great structure has become a minor house.
No turban walks across the lessened floors.
The greenhouse never so badly needed paint.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“Women over fifty already form one of the largest groups in the population structure of the western world. As long as they like themselves, they will not be an oppressed minority. In order to like themselves they must reject trivialization by others of who and what they are. A grown woman should not have to masquerade as a girl in order to remain in the land of the living.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)
“Just as a new scientific discovery manifests something that was already latent in the order of nature, and at the same time is logically related to the total structure of the existing science, so the new poem manifests something that was already latent in the order of words.”
—Northrop Frye (b. 1912)