Editing Quincunx (section)

==Literary and symbolic references==
Various literary works use or refer to the quincunx pattern:
*''Quincunx'' (1564) was the name of the political treatise by a Polish-Ruthenian writer [[Stanisław Orzechowski]]: here, the five points symbolized five pillars of Polish state, with the Church at the very top.<ref>Jerzy Ziomek: Renesans. Wyd. XI – 5 dodruk. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, 2012, s. 201-204, seria: Wielka Historia Literatury Polskiej. ISBN 978-83-01-13843-1.</ref>
*''[[The Garden of Cyrus]]'', or ''The Quincuncial [[Lozenge (shape)|Lozenge]], or Network Plantations of the Ancients, naturally, artificially, mystically considered'', is an essay by [[Thomas Browne|Sir Thomas Browne]], published in 1658.  Browne elaborates upon evidence of the quincunx pattern in art, nature and mystically as evidence of "the wisdom of God". Although writing about the quincunx in its geometric meaning, he may have been influenced by English [[astrology]], as the [[Quincunx (astrology)|astrological meaning of "quincunx"]] (unrelated to the pattern) was introduced by the astronomer Kepler in 1604. The Victorian critic [[Edmund Gosse]] complained that "gathering his forces it is Quincunx, Quincunx, all the way until the very sky itself is darkened with revolving Chess-boards", while conceding that "this radically bad book contains some of the most lovely paragraphs which passed from an English pen during the seventeenth Century".<ref>[https://aquariumofvulcan.blogspot.com/2013/05/what-is-more-beautiful-than-quincunx.html "That Vulcan gave Arrows unto Apollo and Diana"] ''Aquarium of Vulcan''blog; [https://books.google.com/books?id=5BZ8wzwllBEC&dq=Quincunx+Browne&pg=PA126 ''Sir Thomas Browne: A Study in Religious Philosophy''], Dunn, William P., pp 126-129, 1950</ref>  
* [[James Joyce]] uses the term in "[[Grace (short story)|Grace]]", a short story in ''[[Dubliners]]'' of 1914, to describe the seating arrangement of five men in a church service. Lobner<ref>{{citation|title=Equivocation As Stylistic Device: Joyce's 'Grace' and Dante|last=Lobner|first=Corinna del Greco|journal=Lectura Dantis|volume=4|year=1989|url=http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Italian_Studies/LD/numbers/04/lobner.html}}; for additional work on this instance of the quincunx pattern, see {{citation|last=Duffy|first=Charles F.|title=The Seating Arrangement in 'Grace'|journal=James Joyce Quarterly|volume=9|year=1972|pages=487–489}}.</ref> 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.<ref>{{citation|journal=CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture|title=Reading Orientalism and the Crisis of Epistemology in the Novels of Lawrence Durrell|first=James|last=Gifford|volume=1|issue=2|year=1999|doi=10.7771/1481-4374.1036|url=https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol1/iss2/3/|quote=the most dominant formal element expressing this state of multiplicity in The Avignon Quintet is its quincunx structure|doi-access=free}}.</ref>
* ''[[The Quincunx]]'' 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 [[heraldry|heraldic]] device, and is also reflected in the structure of the book.<ref>{{citation|title=Theme Parks, Rainforests and Sprouting Wastelands: European Essays on Theory and Performance in Contemporary British Fiction|volume=123|series=Costerus New Series|editor1-first=Richard|editor1-last=Todd|editor2-first=Luisa|editor2-last=Flora|publisher=Rodopi|year=2000|isbn=9789042005020|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=B1amyMDNfmQC&pg=PA151|pages=151–163|contribution=Mirror games and hidden narratives in ''The Quincunx''|first=Susana|last=Onega}}.</ref>
* 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.<ref>{{citation|title=Narratology Beyond Literary Criticism: Mediality, Disciplinarity|volume=6|series=Narratologia : contributions to narrative theory|editor-first=Jan Christoph|editor-last=Meister|publisher=Walter de Gruyter|year=2005|isbn=9783110183528|first=Silke|last=Horstkotte|contribution=The double dynamics of focalization in W. G. Sebald's ''The Rings of Saturn''|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6-M4s5Hv3DkC&pg=PA25|pages=25–44}}.</ref>
* [[Séamus Heaney]] describes Ireland's historical provinces as together forming a quincunx, as the Irish word for province ''cúige'' (literally: "fifth part") also explicates. The five provinces of Ireland were [[Ulster]] (north), [[Leinster]] (east), [[Connacht]] (west), [[Munster]] (south) and [[County Meath|Meath]] (center, and now a county within Leinster). 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.<ref>{{citation|first=Séamus|last=Heaney|author-link=Séamus Heaney|contribution=Frontiers of Writing|title=The Redress of Poetry: Oxford Lectures|publisher=Faber and Faber|year=1995|pages=186–202}}.</ref><ref>{{citation|title=Poets of Modern Ireland|first=Neil|last=Corcoran|publisher=SIU Press|year=1999|isbn=9780809322909|page=62|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0p3x6JtsnLYC&pg=PA62}}.</ref>
* Early African American scientist [[Benjamin Banneker]] describes a dream in which he is asked to measure the shape of the soul after death. The answer is "quincunx". Research locates his ancestry in Senegal, where the quincunx is a common religious symbol.<ref>{{citation|last=Eglash|first=Ron|date=April 1997|issue=2|journal=Social Studies of Science|jstor=285472|pages=307–315|title=The African heritage of Benjamin Banneker|volume=27|doi=10.1177/030631297027002004|s2cid=143652183}}</ref>