Mazes and Labyrinths

Mazes and labyrinths are arrangements of winding routes. Their names overlap in ordinary usage, but a useful distinction is between a branching puzzle with choices and dead ends, and a single continuous path that leads towards a centre.

A route can repeatedly turn without offering alternative branches. Equally, a branching route can demand decisions even when its destination is nearby. These differences matter when describing the structure of a journey.

Types and Characteristics

• Multicursal mazes: Offer multiple possible routes, including choices that may lead to dead ends.
• Unicursal designs: Provide one continuous route, usually winding towards a centre.
• Hedge mazes: Use living barriers that can prevent the walker from seeing the overall layout.
• Pavement labyrinths: Mark a route on a surface, allowing the pattern to be seen without enclosing the walker between high walls.

The starting point, destination, visibility and availability of a return route are separate features. A person looking down on a plan has information that someone standing between tall hedges may not possess.

Historical Examples

The Hampton Court Palace Maze was commissioned around 1700 by William III and designed by George London and Henry Wise. Historic Royal Palaces describes it as a multicursal puzzle maze and distinguishes it from earlier single-path designs. Historic Royal Palaces: The Maze

At Chartres Cathedral, the labyrinth is presented by the cathedral as a route for pilgrimage and spiritual reflection. This is a different purpose from solving a branching puzzle, even though both settings involve following a winding course. Chartres Cathedral: The Labyrinth

Mythology

In Plutarch's account of Theseus, Ariadne gives Theseus a thread and instructions for negotiating the Labyrinth. He kills the Minotaur and escapes. Plutarch also records alternative accounts of the events, so the thread narrative should be identified as a traditional version rather than treated as a verified historical occurrence. Plutarch: Life of Theseus, section XIX

Within that version, the thread preserves a connection through a complicated route. The challenge of confronting the creature and the challenge of finding a way out are distinct parts of the story.

Plutarch’s version gives Theseus instruction as well as an object:

from her he received the clue of string, and was taught how to thread the mazes of the Labyrinth.

Excerpt from Plutarch’s Life of Theseus, section XIX, in the Stewart–Long edition.

Ariadne’s contribution includes knowing how the string should be used. Possession of equipment and an effective practice are separate parts of the assistance. The wording also joins the material thread to the act of negotiating a route, making the image depend on connection through a sequence of turns rather than on a view from above. Plutarch introduces this account as one reported by many historians and poets, then offers alternatives. Its usefulness for comparing routes does not require treating it as verified history, nor does it warrant claiming that this English translation originated the modern investigative sense of “clue”.

Idioms and Figurative Expressions

• A maze of regulations: Rules experienced as complicated and difficult to navigate.
• A labyrinth of corridors: Passages whose arrangement is difficult to understand or remember.
• Go round in circles: Repeat activity or discussion without making useful progress.
• Reach a dead end: Arrive at a point from which a line of action cannot continue.
• Lose the thread: Stop following the connection between parts of an account or argument.
• Retrace your steps: Return along an earlier route, literally or when reviewing what happened.
• Find a way through: Discover how to proceed through a difficulty or complicated situation.

These expressions belong to everyday language. Their inclusion does not establish that they originated in the myth of Theseus.

Homophones

Maze / maize: A maze is a confusing arrangement of routes. Maize is a cereal crop that can itself be planted to create a seasonal maze.

The route and the traveller's information

Historic Royal Palaces calls Hampton Court's maze multicursal, distinguishing its branching puzzle from a single-path design. This architectural distinction is useful, but it should not force every literary occurrence of labyrinth into the same technical classification.

Compare three questions: Are there alternative routes? Can the traveller see the overall pattern? Can the outward route be retraced? A winding path, a confusing view and a lost return route can occur separately.

• Theseus and the Minotaur makes return from the interior a distinct problem.
• Hansel and Gretel provides contrasting examples of durable and disappearing route markers.
• Maps, Compasses and Lost Bearings connects a view of the whole arrangement with the information available from one position.
• Image schema provides terminology for the underlying relationships without supplying a fixed interpretation of the scene.

Related Pages

Paths and Trails, Monsters, The Hero's Journey, Ties and Binds.

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