Seeking to Become All Things: The Neoplatonic Soul and the Next World in Sir Thomas Browne's The Garden of Cyrus

The relationship of Thomas Browne's The Garden to the ‘[w]orld […] after death’ has been explained in terms of generation and verdancy as symbolic of eternal life. However, when this relationship is viewed in the light of the Neoplatonic analogy between the world soul and human soul woven throu...

Full description

Saved in:

Bibliographic Details
Published in:	The Modern language review Vol. 112; no. 1; pp. 35 - 53
Main Author:	Zimmer, Mary E
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	Belfast Modern Humanities Research Association 01-01-2017
Subjects:	Analysis Authors Contrapuntal motion Criticism and interpretation Divinity Humans Light Macrocosm Microcosms Neoplatonism Plants Platonism Soul Symbolism World soul Writers
Online Access:	Get full text
Tags:	Add Tag No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!

Description
Summary:	The relationship of Thomas Browne's The Garden to the ‘[w]orld […] after death’ has been explained in terms of generation and verdancy as symbolic of eternal life. However, when this relationship is viewed in the light of the Neoplatonic analogy between the world soul and human soul woven throughout, the essay becomes a process of actualizing man's soul as microcosm of this world—a process completed only in the next. Thus emerges a relationship between The Garden and the ‘[w]orld […] after death’ that is more fundamental, and more explanatory of the work as a whole, than garden symbolism.
Bibliography:	ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23
ISSN:	0026-7937 2222-4319
DOI:	10.5699/modelangrevi.112.1.0035