"""Were these and other mathematicians following contemporary literary
conventions? a nod to one of the other liberal arts? or an underlying
interest in structures?"""
In the late/post Renaissance, every educated man was taught to
write and appreciate what by our standards would be extremely exacting
verse. Poetry was far better reasoned than mathematics.
Logic textbooks widely took as their examples, and the material
to which logic was applied, lines of verse. "Mathematicians" were well
versed. It is worth considering that the poetry of this period was very
much better and more subtly reasoned than the mathematics. The most
instructive single work in these matters is the extrordinary ELIZABETHAN
AND METAPHYSICAL IMAGERY by Rosemond Tuve. I think that one could argue
that the working together of image and logic was very much more achieved
in poetry than mathematics, and that this well honed skill played a
role in the emergence of crossings of image and logic that is
characteristic of 17th century leading edge mathematics.
[2] Paul Valery, How good?
A question of mathematician-poets. Paul Valery. I've wondered how
good a mathematician he was? I'd guess he was somewhat heavy-handed.