Thomas Browne, De Quincunx, or The Garden of Cyrus

Claire Preston (Queen Mary, University of London)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.04: English Writing and Culture of the Seventeenth Century, 1625-1688.
Vol. editors: Jennifer Brady (Rhodes College), Daniel Cook (University of Dundee), Neil Forsyth (Université de Lausanne), Claire Preston (Queen Mary, University of London), J A Roe (University of York), Virginia Mason Vaughan (Clark University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1658

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Natural history

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No work of the mid-seventeenth century better illustrates the variety of world-views available to the naturalist and the experimental philosopher than Thomas Browne's

The Garden of Cyrus

(1658). Also known as

de Quincunx

(from the diamond figure of four points plus the centre-point), its ostensible purpose was to discover quincunxes, or figures of five, in the natural and the artificial world – in plants, in battle-formations, in the angle of incidence in which light strikes the retina. These examples alone indicate the eccentricity of the project, a quality which has both delighted and bothered Browne's readers. Although it is true that

Cyrus

is a catalogue of quincunxes, or “emphaticall decussations”, it is far more than that. In this essay, more than any other of his works, he…

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1084 words

Citation: Preston, Claire. "De Quincunx, or The Garden of Cyrus". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 04 July 2003 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=5714, accessed 26 November 2024.]

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Thomas Browne, De Quincunx, or The Garden of Cyrus

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