The Politics of the Picturesque: Literature, Landscape and Aesthetics since 1770

by Stephen Copley, Peter Garside

Overview

The picturesque (a set of theories, ideas, and conventions that grew up around the question of how we look at landscape) offers a valuable focus for new investigations into the literary, artistic, social, and cultural history of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This volume of essays by scholars from various disciplines in Britain and America incorporates a range of historically and theoretically challenging approaches to the topic. It covers the writers most closely identified with the exposition of the picturesque as a theory, and also traces the influence and implications of its aesthetic in a variety of fields in the Romantic period, including literary and pictorial works, estate management, and women's fashion. Several essays deal more specifically with radical critiques and appropriations of the picturesque in the nineteenth century, while in others its influence is traced beyond traditionally accepted geographical or historical bounds.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521131100
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	02/11/2010
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)

Table of Contents

List of illustrations; List of tables; Notes on contributors; Introduction Stephen Copley and Peter Garside; 1. Picturesque landscaping and estate management: Uvedale Price and Nathaniel Kent at Foxley Stephen Daniels and Charles Watkins; 2. William Gilpin and the black lead mine Stephen Copley; 3. The ruined abbey: Picturesque and Gothic values Michael Charlesworth; 4. The Picturesque and ready-to-wear femininity Ann Bermingham; 5. 'The coquetry of nature': politics and the picturesque in women's fiction Vivien Jones; 6. Picturesque figure and landscape: Meg Merrilies and the gypsies Peter Garside; 7. Romantic explorers and picturesque travellers John Whale; 8. The legacy of the Picturesque: landscape, property and the ruin Raimonda Modiano; 9. The Picturesque and the sublime: two worldscapes David Punter; 10. Agrarians against the Picturesque: ultra-radicalism and the revolutionary politics of land David Worrall; 11. The Chartist Picturesque Anne Janowitz; 12. The metropolitan Picturesque Malcolm Andrews; Index.

Editorial Reviews

Review of the hardback: 'An often stimulating collection, whose diversity seems entirely appropriate to the category it addresses.' Ecumene

From the Publisher