Flexilinear Language: Giambattista Della Porta's "Elementorum curvilineorum libri tres"

The love of spectacle and the spectacular, central to so much of Giambattista Della Porta's work, also appears in his only text dedicated to pure mathematics, the Elementa curvilinea. While the text — with its errors, its unoriginal material, and its claim to have done the impossible, namely, squaring the circle — was treated to a polite silence by contemporary mathematicians and fellow members of the Accademia dei Lincei, it is nevertheless a fascinating document for literary scholars in terms of its inventive use of language, its attempts to induce marvel in its readers, and as a lens into understanding why Della Porta claimed a mathematical instrument — the proportional compass — to be his personal emblem.