Chiasmus in English Renaissance literature: The rhetorical, philosophical, and the theological significance of 'X' in Spenser, Donne, Herbert, and Browne

This dissertation focuses on the poetry and prose of Spenser, Donne, Herbert and Browne and explores the ways in which chiasmus, any crossing pattern or X (chi) structure, mediates critical Renaissance values and tensions. Chiasmus is a rhetorical figure, the Platonic configuration of the World-Soul, and a cross symbol. In the aftermath of the Reformation and at the dawn of modernity, chiasmus in the hands of Renaissance authors was a vehicle for mediating their ultimate concerns about art, nature, and religion. These concerns or tensions emerged on all three levels of the chi---whether the art of rhetoric and poesy derived from classical rhetorical manuals, the natural philosophical legacy traced from Plato's Timaeus, or its Christological symbolism initiated in patristic writings.;The first chapter surveys classical, biblical and medieval literature for instances of chiasmus that establish the stylistic, philosophical, and theological associations chiasmus evinces in Renaissance literature. Renaissance and classical rhetorical manuals, Plato's Timaeus, and Justin Martyr's gloss of Plato help define chiasmus. With this three-fold definition in mind, I then explicate chiastic passages from the New Testament, Augustine's On Christian Doctrine, Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy , Anselm's Proslogion, and finally Dante's Paradiso.;Chapters Two through Five treat the works of Spenser, Donne, Herbert, and Browne. In the Faerie Queene chiasmus dramatizes both the perversions of moral and cosmic order (e.g. the actions of Duessa, Archimago, Despair, Mutabilitie) and the conversion of chaos and evil into good especially in the actions of Arthur, Una, Redcrosse, and Amoret. Chiasmus in Donne's sermons and English and Latin lyrics documents the falseness of women, the reciprocity of true love, and the proper veneration of the cross. Through chiasmus in his English and Latin poetry, George Herbert meditates on theological paradoxes, the passion of Christ, and the crises and demands these beliefs entail. Sir Thomas Browne identifies chiasmus with the quincunx in his Garden of Cyrus and establishes it as an emblem for the synthesis of ancient and modern thought---Platonism and Bacon's scientific method. Thus chiasmus becomes identified with antithesis, sophistry, vice, blasphemy, and discord but also synthesis, paradox, virtue, sacrament, and concord.