Labyrinth of Ruins

Richard B. Shapiro's research is focused on early modern lyric poetry and the intellectual history of that period. In a previous career as a computer industry entrepreneur, he enjoyed architecting complex systems and practiced advanced modeling techniques. He discovered that some of these skills are applicable to the complex, hierarchical systems by which the medieval scholars sought to organize the cosmos and all human knowledge. In Labyrinth of Ruins, he uses these skills to solve a multilevel puzzle which reveals the philosophical underpinnings of the Hekatompathia, a remarkable sonnet sequence published in 1582. His deciphering of this unique cryptographic-literary puzzle reveals both an astonishing literary device and the Platonist architecture that underlies the sequence.