{
  "id": "a_zfyvv4h6",
  "oid": 165030,
  "revision": 1,
  "revision_oid": 165031,
  "work": "orthodoxy",
  "edition": "pg16769-r1",
  "title": "The triangles already belonged to a satire of unlimited emancipation",
  "anchors": [
    {
      "unit": "CH03.P023",
      "oid": 61,
      "role": null,
      "edition": "pg16769-r1",
      "paragraph": "CH03.P023",
      "exact": "Somebody wrote a work called \"The Loves of the Triangles\";",
      "start": 2344,
      "end": 2402,
      "prefix": "life comes to a lamentable end. ",
      "suffix": " I never read it, but I am sure ",
      "url": "/orthodoxy/pg16769-r1/CH03.P023#char=2344,2402"
    }
  ],
  "body_markdown": "The title belongs to a collaborative parody published in three installments of the Tory *Anti-Jacobin* in 1798. The inspected witness is Tristanne Connolly's 2025 Romantic Circles transcription of the original issues 23, 24 and 26, which records variants from the 1799 collections. Its introduction identifies Gifford, Canning, Ellis and Frere as involved while warning that particular contributions are difficult to assign securely. The poem parodies the erotic scientific personification of Erasmus Darwin's botanical poetry: its mock argument includes a marriage of Euclid and Algebra and a Rectangle in love with three Curves. See [the edition, introduction and opening argument](https://romantic-circles.org/sites/default/files/imported/editions/loves-plants/5.11.%20Triangles.pdf), PDF pp. 1–5.\n\nAn especially apt coincidence lies in the prose introduction, where the fictitious author Higgins treats established institutions as restraints on natural human agency and imagines humanity expanding beyond its existing condition. Chesterton's joke thus names a work whose own satire had connected extravagant emancipation with geometrical absurdity. He expressly says he has never read it, so this contextual fit should not be turned into an influence claim. His immediate use of its title is different: even affection for a triangle would presuppose the identity supplied by its three sides.",
  "sources": [
    {
      "url": "https://romantic-circles.org/sites/default/files/imported/editions/loves-plants/5.11.%20Triangles.pdf",
      "title": "The Loves of the Triangles, Appendix 5.11 to Erasmus Darwin's The Loves of the Plants, ed. Tristanne Connolly (Romantic Circles, 2025)",
      "locator": "PDF pp. 1–5; editorial introduction; Anti-Jacobin no. 23, 16 April 1798, original pp. 179–180 and argument of first canto",
      "exact": null
    }
  ],
  "citations": [],
  "external_references": [
    {
      "url": "https://romantic-circles.org/sites/default/files/imported/editions/loves-plants/5.11.%20Triangles.pdf",
      "title": "the edition, introduction and opening argument"
    }
  ],
  "limits": [
    "Authorship is collaborative; no individual line assignment is asserted.",
    "Chesterton expressly disclaims having read the poem."
  ],
  "metadata": {
    "run": "chapter-03-restart-2026-11-07",
    "paragraph_investigator": "P023",
    "task": [
      {
        "approach": "Philosophical contextualization: then and since",
        "question": "Does Nietzsche's opposition between inherited command and creative willing actually exclude determinate creation?"
      },
      {
        "approach": "Assumed knowledge and unusual language",
        "question": "What was The Loves of the Triangles, and what does its satirical context add to the geometrical joke?"
      },
      {
        "approach": "Quotations and attributions",
        "question": "Can the attributed rejection of Thou shalt not be securely located in Davidson?"
      }
    ],
    "model": "gpt-6.1-sol"
  },
  "content_sha256": "sha256:b0c7960f69a07377436bea2c69ca647e6c9b9519d8b5954a5a44b6c9282d462f",
  "created_at": "2026-11-07T16:33:54Z",
  "is_current": true,
  "url": "/a/a_zfyvv4h6",
  "revision_path": "/a/a_zfyvv4h6/r/1",
  "cited_by": []
}