Quincunx - Literary Symbolism

Literary Symbolism

Various literary works use or refer to the quincunx pattern for its symbolic value:

• The English physician Sir Thomas Browne in his philosophical discourse The Garden of Cyrus (1658) elaborates upon evidence of the quincunx pattern in art, nature and mystically as evidence of "the wisdom of God". Although Browne wrote about quincunx in its geometric meaning, he may also have been influenced by English astrology, as the astrological meaning of "quincunx" (unrelated to the pattern) had recently come into vogue.
• James Joyce uses the term in Grace, a short story in The Dubliners of 1914, to describe the seating arrangement of five men in a church service. Lobner argues that in this context the pattern serves as a symbol both of the wounds of Christ and of the Greek cross.
• Lawrence Durrell's novel-sequence The Avignon Quintet is arranged in the form of a quincunx, according to the author; the final novel in the sequence is called Quinx, the plot of which includes the discovery of a quincunx of stones.
• The Quincunx (ISBN 0-345-37113-5) is the title of a lengthy and elaborate novel by Charles Palliser set in 19th-century England, published in 1989; the pattern appears in the text as a heraldic device, and is also reflected in the structure of the book.
• In the first chapter of The Rings of Saturn, W.G. Sebald's narrator cites Browne's writing on the quincunx. The quincunx in turn becomes a model for the way in which the rest of the novel unfolds.
• Séamus Heaney describes Ireland's provinces together forming a quincunx, as the Irish word for province cúige (literally: "fifth part") also explicates. The five provinces of Ireland are Ulster (north), Leinster (east), Connacht (west), Munster (south) and Meath (the center). More specifically, in his essay Frontiers of Writing, Heaney creates an image of five towers forming a quincunx pattern within Ireland, one tower for each of the five provinces, each having literary significance.