Both
unicursal labyrinths, with a single path meandering most often toward a center, and multicursal labyrinths, with more complex designs and multiple paths and dead-ends, signify artistic order and chaos at the same time, as well as a laborious progress from disorientation to awareness and understanding (Aarseth 6).
Following with another Classical metaphor we could remember that Theseus, after killing the ferocious Minotaur, is able to escape from the
unicursal labyrinth thanks to Ariadne's thread; this allowed Theseus to obtain a new becoming that was waiting for him outside of the labyrinth.
Drawn according to the
unicursal form known as the Chartres model (after the 13th-century pavement maze that patterns the crossing at Chartres Cathedral; Fig.
As a literal structure, she distinguishes between
unicursal and the multicursal labyrinths, and traces those images through Western literary and cultural history.
They differ in design and intention, too, as Adrian Fisher (2006:7) notes succinctly: "A labyrinth implies a single path and aspects of ritual, while a maze is a puzzle, with junctions and choices." Some of these choices "lead to dead ends or blind alleys" (Kern, 2000:23), neither of which are possible on the labyrinth's uninterrupted,
unicursal path.
A remark on
unicursal curves lying on the general quartic surface.
In form, it is a
unicursal, circuitous, nonlinear path.
A few lines on, the poet directly juxtaposes the female mind's flexibility with the homogenic and
unicursal thinking of man: