A pentalogy (from Greek πεντα- penta- , "five" and -λογία -logia , "discourse") is a compound literary or narrative work that is explicitly divided into five parts. Although modern use of the word implies both that the parts are reasonably self-contained and that the structure was intended by the author, historically, neither was necessarily true: in fact, a pentalogia could be assembled by a later editor, just as Plotinus 's Enneads were arranged in nines by Porphyry in order to create an overarching structure of six which would express the idea of perfection .
6-578: The Five Books may refer to: For series of five books, see Pentalogy . Pentalogy In Western literature, the oldest quinary structure with great influence is the Torah or Pentateuch; in the Far East, it is the Five Classics . The most famous pentalogy in medieval literature is Nizami Ganjavi 's Panj Ganj , or Khamsa ("Five Treasures"), a collection of five epics which was composed in
12-448: A pentalogy of classical romances, and Ali-Shir Nava'i : Khamsa (16th century). The fivefold structure is usually first encountered by an English-speaking reader in the plays of William Shakespeare , which, like nearly all English, French and German plays of the period, are divided into five acts, even when the narrative of the play hardly seems to demand it; in his Essay on Comedy (1877), George Meredith wrote sardonically that "Five
18-469: Is dignity with a trailing robe; whereas one, or two, or three acts would be short skirts, and degrading." The origin of this tradition was examined by Brander Matthews in A Book about the Theater . It could be traced to Horace : Brander explains that Horace came to this conclusion on the basis of the drama of Euripides : Lawrence Durrell 's pentalogy The Avignon Quintet (1974–85) is an example of
24-461: The Kundalini . The purpose of the work was to go beyond his previous tetralogy The Alexandria Quartet . In an interview, Durrell agreed with James P. Carley that "Christianity as we know it is a quaternity with a suppressed fourth" and a critic describes his ambition as being that of "achieving the ' quintessence ', that is in its combination of Eastern spirituality and Western science leading to
30-491: The latter half of the 12th century. They were Makhzan al-Asrar , Khusraw o Shirin , Layli o Majnun , Eskandar-nameh , and Haft Paykar . The idea was widely imitated, the number five being seen as having mystical significance ; for example, the 16th-century poet Faizi , the poet laureate of Akbar 's court, attempted a work on the same scale, but completed only three of the intended five parts. Other famous examples include Amir Khusro : Khamsa-e-Nizami (13th century),
36-550: The reappearance of numerological ideas in modern fiction. In an attempt to subvert the normal linear structure, Durrell explicitly specified it as a quincunx and related it to the Gnostical interpretations. The best-known discussion of this shape in English literature is Thomas Browne 's essay The Garden of Cyrus , which relies on Pythagorean traditions, but Durrell goes much further afield, relating it to Angkor Wat and
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