DOCSLIB.ORG

The Heartlessness of the Picturesque: Sympathy and Disgust in Ruskin's Aesthetics Author(S): John Macarthur Source: Assemblage, No

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Heartlessness of the Picturesque: Sympathy and Disgust in Ruskin's Aesthetics Author(S): John Macarthur Source: Assemblage, No The Heartlessness of the Picturesque: Sympathy and Disgust in Ruskin's Aesthetics Author(s): John Macarthur Source: Assemblage, No. 32 (Apr., 1997), pp. 126-141 Published by: The MIT Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3171412 . Accessed: 12/09/2014 11:49 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The MIT Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Assemblage. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Fri, 12 Sep 2014 11:49:36 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 1. John Ruskin,End of Market, St. Croydon John Macarthur The Heartlessness of the Picturesque: Sympathy and Disgust in Ruskin's Aesthetics John Macarthuris a lecturer at the Uni- For, in a certain sense, the lower picturesque ideal is an emi- versity of Queensland, Brisbane,Australia. nently heartless one; the lover of it seems to go forth into the world in a temper as merciless as its rocks. All other men feel some regret at the sight of disorder and ruin. He alone delights in both; it matters not of what. Fallen cottage - desolate villa - deserted village - blasted heath - mouldering castle - to him, so that they do but show jagged angles of stone and timber, all are equally joyful. Poverty, and darkness, and guilt, bring their several contributions to his treasuryof pleasant thoughts. The shattered window, opening into black and ghastly rents of wall, the foul rag or strawwisp stopping them, the dangerous roof, decrepit floor and stair, ragged misery, or wasting age of the inhabitants, - all these conduce, each in due measure, to the fullness of his satisfaction. What is it to him that the old man has passed away his seventy years in helpless darknessand untaught waste of soul? The old man has at last accomplished his destiny, and filled the corner of a sketch, where something unsightly was wanting. What is it to him that the people fester in that feverish misery in the lower quarter of the town, by the river?Nay it is much to him. What else were they made for? what could they have done better? John Ruskin, "Of the Turnerian Picturesque,"in Modem Painters, vol. 4 (6: 19-20)1 John Ruskin's disgust at the picturesque is palpable and ex- emplary in passages such as this. For him, the inhabitants of the picturesque scene are unconscious of their "untaught waste of soul." But for such Assemblage 32: 126-141 ? 1997 by the distress to go unnoticed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology heartless aesthete in a search for tone and shadow is another 127 This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Fri, 12 Sep 2014 11:49:36 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions or N 4t'N '1!Ip This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Fri, 12 Sep 2014 11:49:36 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions assemblage 32 and parallel kind of waste:the affliction of art with a can- Disinterest kerous failure of sympathy.Yet the movement of the pas- Ruskin'sproposal to cure the picturesque with sympathy sage, from its propositionalforms to the description of a might seem to be in opposition to eighteenth-centurycon- scene, particularand exemplary,is like that supposed in the cepts of aesthetical disinterest.The invention of modern term "picturesque."We say a thing is "like a picture"not aesthetics is synonymous with the concept of disinterested- in order to use it as such, but to walk in or out of it, inter- ness. In the eighteenth century the problem of aesthetic changing, back and forward,the flatness of possession with theory had been how to articulatethe relation of things of lived experience or theoretical insight. value and the exercise of taste. Ruskin points out that aes- We might think, and rightly,that this passage is confes- theticism creates an opposite problem of the relation of sional, describing feelings that Ruskin knows well. Read in taste to the ugly, the distorted,and the pathological. This isolation, the passage might seem a renunciation. In fact, it relation had alreadybeen problematized in the first period is an overly affecting call for a quite subtle modification of of the picturesque around the general question of how to the picturesque that Ruskin is proposing. For him, the pic- conceptualize a high taste for low objects. In the theory of turesque is a startingpoint, one that it is unclear he ever Uvedale Price this gradient of taste is merely a tactical mo- surpasses.It is the received aesthetic of his age, which he ment in evincing knowledge of the hierarchyof genre.2We believes can be given a cause and origin (lack of sympathy) exercise our taste on Dutch paintings of peasants in cottages and then surpassedinto a more complete aesthetic project only to expressthe liberalityof our appreciationof the land- for which the picturesque had given us a taste. The pictur- scapes of Claude Lorrain;similarly, our love for the ordi- esque is "heartless";nevertheless, it can lead us to nobility. nary agriculturalcountryside of Britaindoes not signify an Indeed, the movement that occurs here in Ruskin'scom- inability to appropriatethe Alps or the Bay of Naples. mentary is little more than an iteration of the structureof Price's interest in the picturesque, which is to say, in the the picturesque idea; we give up the picture for the ability ordinary,in the ugly and deformed, is supposed to be an to split viewing into concept and affect. Ruskin'siteration is explorationof the range of taste, so as to better understand significant, however, not only in the historyof the propaga- and agree on a common standardof proprietyin taste. But tion of the concept of the picturesque, but in its conceptual Price was unable to persuade his critics that his proposalof structure.It is on the basis of Ruskin'suptake that the pic- the value of low objects in evincing disinterestwas not, in turesque reiteratesin modern perceptualistculture. Ruskin the end, a perverseinterest in disgust. After all, Price as- writes of the picturesque as if it were a naturalpropensity to sumes a special value for the ugly and deformed, which is taste that requiresthe development of an aesthetic theory to that they can improve in our appropriationof them while discipline and instruct it. Rathermore obscurely, he deals the beautiful is indifferentto us. Ruskin'simage of the per- with the picturesque as a preexistingtheoretical problem of versityof picturesque practice is, then, the repetition of genre, disinterest,and affected disgust. In moving between a critique from the turn of the century, which he must these two constructions of the picturesque, Ruskin invents have been familiarwith through his reading of Humphry for it a temporal mechanism by which the picturesque can Repton. But, in general, the exaggerationand critique of be both a present lack and a historical origin. Price's position by Repton, J. C. Loudon, William 128 This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Fri, 12 Sep 2014 11:49:36 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Macarthur Marshall,and others is directed at Price's taste and his vari- nor take pleasure.4He offers a very simplistic hierarchyof ance from propriety.3He had made himself ridiculous with genre based on the distance that can be achieved from the his appetite for views of higglers, and by imagining banditti exact imitation of nature and the particularityof things.5 on his lawn, and no one would have thought to be con- The higher genres do not call on our appetites and desires, cerned with the effect of Price's aesthetics on the subjects of do not put us in a relationshipwith objects. Rather,moral his view. This is the force of Ruskin'spassage, which im- judgments are called on to be exercised over general ideas bues the foolishness of aesthetic distancing with a sense of in the realm of civil life. Price argues against Reynolds that injustice and moves the social and political context of taste the picturesque was a kind of generic transcoding;like, he from outside (the choice of objects proper for gentlemen to says, the plays of Shakespearein which are embedded rustic judge) to inside (the subject/object relation). Ruskin'spas- and comic scenes and subplots that provide a reflection sage asks us to briefly imagine what should be impossible on the great themes of the play. He nevertheless follows and must be avoided: that crippled laborersand tubercular Reynolds on the issue of detail; finding that the better genre children might ask us why we look at them "like that." paintersare those who are not obsessed with mechanical imitation and who expressa knowledge of their subject as As I will in this much of the mechanism of argue paper, genre. Few records exist of Ruskin'sOxford lectures of 1875 aesthetical continues in Ruskin in relation to the disgust on Reynolds'sDiscourses, but the notes that surviveshow a that Ruskin's is directed picturesque, except disgust largely vehement continuity of the idea of a nobility of taste and a at the ratherthan it. But before look- picturesque through hierarchy of painting (22: 493-507).
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Folk Song in Cumbria: a Distinctive Regional
    FOLK SONG IN CUMBRIA: A DISTINCTIVE REGIONAL REPERTOIRE? A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Susan Margaret Allan, MA (Lancaster), BEd (London) University of Lancaster, November 2016 ABSTRACT One of the lacunae of traditional music scholarship in England has been the lack of systematic study of folk song and its performance in discrete geographical areas. This thesis endeavours to address this gap in knowledge for one region through a study of Cumbrian folk song and its performance over the past two hundred years. Although primarily a social history of popular culture, with some elements of ethnography and a little musicology, it is also a participant-observer study from the personal perspective of one who has performed and collected Cumbrian folk songs for some forty years. The principal task has been to research and present the folk songs known to have been published or performed in Cumbria since circa 1900, designated as the Cumbrian Folk Song Corpus: a body of 515 songs from 1010 different sources, including manuscripts, print, recordings and broadcasts. The thesis begins with the history of the best-known Cumbrian folk song, ‘D’Ye Ken John Peel’ from its date of composition around 1830 through to the late twentieth century. From this narrative the main themes of the thesis are drawn out: the problem of defining ‘folk song’, given its eclectic nature; the role of the various collectors, mediators and performers of folk songs over the years, including myself; the range of different contexts in which the songs have been performed, and by whom; the vexed questions of ‘authenticity’ and ‘invented tradition’, and the extent to which this repertoire is a distinctive regional one.
    [Show full text]
  • INSTITUTIONALISING the PICTURESQUE: the Discourse of the New Zealand Institute of Landscape Architects
    INSTITUTIONALISING THE PICTURESQUE: The discourse of the New Zealand Institute of Landscape Architects A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Landscape Architecture at Lincoln University by Jacky Bowring Lincoln University 1997 To Dorothy and Ella iii Abstract of a thesis submitted in fulfIlment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Landscape Architecture INSTITUTIONALISING THE PICTURESQUE: The discourse of the New Zealand Institute of Landscape Architects by Jacky Bowring Despite its origins in England two hundred years ago, the picturesque continues to influence landscape architectural practice in late twentieth-century New Zealand. The evidence for this is derived from a close reading of the published discourse of the New Zealand Institute of Landscape Architects, particularly the now defunct professional journal, The Landscape. Through conceptualising the picturesque as a language, a model is developed which provides a framework for recording the survey results. The way in which the picturesque persists as naturalised conventions in the discourse is expressed as four landscape myths. Through extending the metaphor of language, pidgins and creoles provide an analogy for the introduction and development of the picturesque in New Zealand. Some implications for theory, practice and education follow. Keywords picturesque, New Zealand, landscape architecture, myth, language, natural, discourse iv Preface The motivation for this thesis was the way in which the New Zealand landscape reflects the various influences that have shaped it. In the context of landscape architecture the specific focus is the designed landscape, and particularly the perpetuation of design conventions. Through my own education at Lincoln College (now Lincoln University) I became aware of how aspects of the teaching of landscape architecture were based on uncritically presented design 'truths'.
    [Show full text]
  • Picaresque Picturesque
    Picaresque picturesque Dudley Zoo by Tecton and Berthold Lubetkin Karolina Szynalska May 2010 2 Walking around Dudley zoo on a fresh spring morning; I was contemplating pleasing decay. In 1825 Thomas Atkins and George Wombwell, Wild Beast Merchants , were both exhibiting their menagerie collections in London at Bartholomew fair. Wombwell had to travel from Newcastle, where he had been exhibiting prior to the fair. It took ten days of gruelling travel, which resulted in the unhappy event of Wombwell’s prize exhibit, his elephant, dying of exhaustion on arrival. Atkins responded to this by advertising the only living Elephant at the fair . Wombwell countered – the only dead Elephant at the fair! , exhibited the dead monster, and did much better business than Atkins. The lifeless creature appeared to be a greater attraction than the living one. Decay is attractive (or even cathartic). Pleasing decay is a part of the vocabulary of English romantic painting Those people who have no eye for it say that it indicates a decay of the mind to dwell on it; those who have an eye for it say that a weathered building can symbolize the whole of man’s relation to nature (Piper 1947: 85). Those who can see it and celebrate it are romantic. Piper believed that a big factor of the picturesque movement was an expression of the Romantic fuss about pleasing decay (Piper 1947: 85-87). He sought, however, to draw a firm distinction between a ruin and pleasant decay. Not all decay can be pleasing. A description opposite to pleasing is ridiculous , which the Duchess of Marlborough used to describe John Vanburgh’s (1664 – 1726) famous proposal to retain the old ruined manor as a feature in the landscape of the new Blenheim Palace.
    [Show full text]
  • Three Essays
    ,,, *-"'© " i g ;»-r-a**w»""fi^:JE3E* ! *" A T- -SmS»S"i [ i J E ' y f Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2010 with funding from Research Library, The Getty Research Institute http://www.archive.org/details/threeessaysonpicOOgilp ESSAYS, ON PICTURESQUE BEAUTY; &c. &c. &c. ; ; Three Essays : ON PICTURESQUE BEAUTY; ON PICTURESQUE TRAVEL AND ON SKETCHING LANDSCAPE: TO WHICH IS ADDED A POEM, ON LANDSCAPE PAINTING. By WILLIAM GILPIN, M. A. PREBENDARY OF SALISBURY J AND VICAR OF BOLDRE IN NEW FOREST, NEAR LYMINGTON. London PRINTED for R. BLAMIRE, in the STRAND. M.DCC.XCII. T O WILLIAM LOCK, Esq; O F NORBURT-PARK, in SURRET. DEAR SIR, X h e following eflays, and poem, I beg leave to infcribe to you. Indeed I do little more, than return your own : for the beft remarks, and obfervations in them, are yours. Such as may be cavilled at, I am perfuaded, muft be mine. A publifhed work is certainly a fair object of criticifm : but I think, my dear fir, we pidturefque people are a little mifunderftood with regard to our genera/ intention. I have A feveral — ( a ) fevefal times been furprized at finding us reprefented, as fuppofing, all beauty to confifl in piclurefque beauty—and the face of nature to be examined only by the rules of paint big. Whereas, in fact, we always fpeak a different language. We fpeak of the grand fcenes of nature, tho uninterefting in a piclurefque light, as having a ftrong effect on the imagination often a ftronger, than when they are pro- perly difpofed for the pencil.
    [Show full text]
  • The Historic County of Westmorland
    The Historic County of Westmorland A Case Study on the range, availability and usefulness of publications relating to the Historic County of Westmorland, and on the current provision of support for Local Historical Studies, with specific reference to the county town of Kendal Contents Introduction 3 Purpose and Scope of the Report 3 The Historic County of Westmorland 4 A Survey and Critical Evaluation of the Scholarly Resources Relevant to the History of the County of Westmorland, and to the County Town of Kendal, from the Early Modern Period to the Present Day Antiquarians and Archive Makers of the 16th and 17th Centuries 6 The First County History in Print 12 In Search of the Picturesque/Losing sight of the Goal 13 Late 19th Century Foundation of Modern Historical Scholarship 15 The Historical Society and the Victoria County History 16 Local History Groups 17 Contemporary Narratives for Kendal 18 An Assessment of Current Provision for Local History Studies in Westmorland and the County Town of Kendal Libraries and Archives 19 Online/Digital Resources 20 Conclusion 21 Bibliography 22 Appendices 26 Appendix I Annotated Lists of Published Resources Appendix Ia Selected 16th & 17th Century Scholarship Appendix Ib Selected 18th Century Scholarship Appendix Ic Selected 19th Century Scholarship Appendix Id Selected Modern Scholarship Appendix Ie Selected Cartographic Evidence Appendix If Selected Resources for Kendal Appendix II Libraries, Archives and Record Offices Appendix III Historical Societies and Local History Groups Appendix IV Online/Digital Resources Illustrations Cover: Detail from William Hole’s county map of ‘Cumberlande, Westmorlande’ of 1622, created to illustrate Michael Drayton’s 15,000-line poem the Poly-Olbion P4: ‘The Countie Westmorland and Kendale the Cheif Towne Described with the Arms of Such Nobles as have been Earles of Either of Them’.
    [Show full text]
  • Garland D. Beasley
    www.gothicnaturejournal.com Gothic Nature Gothic Nature 1 How to Cite: Beasley, G. D. (2019) The Value(s) of Landscape: The Sublime, the Picturesque, and Ann Radcliffe. Gothic Nature. 1, 177-201. Available from: https://gothicnaturejournal.com/. Published: 14 September 2019 Peer Review: All articles that appear in the Gothic Nature journal have been peer reviewed through a double-blind process. Copyright: © 2019 The Author(s). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Open Access: Gothic Nature is a peer-reviewed open access journal. www.gothicnaturejournal.com The Value(s) of Landscape: The Sublime, the Picturesque, and Ann Radcliffe Garland D. Beasley ABSTRACT Critics and scholars have long noted the way Ann Radcliffe makes use of landscape aesthetics throughout her Gothic novels, especially The Romance of the Forest (1791) and The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794). Despite this, there remains a striking dearth of scholarship on Radcliffe’s use of landscape within the realm of eco-criticism. This paper seeks to fill that gap and to begin to reposition Gothic landscape within the eco- critical debate. Tom J. Hillard (2009) and Simon Estok (2009), among others, have theorised Gothic landscape as spaces within which terror and horror are achieved, produced, and enacted. To be sure, Radcliffe’s ‘On the Supernatural in Poetry’ finds value in such spaces, at least for the purposes of terror, yet Radcliffe does not offer only one vision of landscape in her Gothic.
    [Show full text]
  • Picturesque Landscaping and Uvedale Price
    Japanese Journal of Human Geography 66―6（2014） ‘Nature too wild’ ? : Picturesque Landscaping and Uvedale Price Charles WATKINS University of Nottingham Abstract This paper considers the relevance of the work of Uvedale Price（ 1747―1829） to debates about the relationship between nature, landscape and society. It focusses on the management of gardens and trees and concludes by assessing his influence on nineteenth century ideas of nature, art and landscape. Uvedale Price published his Essay on the Picturesque in 1794. He defined the ‘picturesque’ as an aesthetic category lying somewhere between Edmund Burke’s ‘sublime’ and ‘beautiful’. He saw the Essay as a practical guide to managing estates and in this it was generally well received. It generated a literary controversy as he set his ideas of the picturesque forcefully against the then established and celebrated national style of landscape gardening practiced and popularised by Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown. Price’s work influenced literary figures such as Jane Austen, Sir Walter Scott and William Wordsworth ; artists such as John Constable and David Cox and landscape gardeners such as Humphry Repton ; John Claudius Loudon and William Sawrey Gilpin. By the mid-nineteenth century picturesque ways of seeing the landscape had become so normal and natural that Uvedale Price’s contribution to the debate began to be forgotten, to be revived by architectural historians in the twentieth century. Key words : nature, picturesque, cultural geography, landscape, gardens, trees, Uvedale Price I Introduction Picturesque aesthetics became one of the most potent and influential ways of interpreting and understanding landscapes and trees in England from the eighteenth century onwards.
    [Show full text]
  • Freedom in Middle French Enlightenment : Interpreted Through a Picturesque Garden
    University of Louisville ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository Electronic Theses and Dissertations 8-2010 Freedom in middle French Enlightenment : interpreted through a picturesque garden. Ning Jia 1977- University of Louisville Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.library.louisville.edu/etd Recommended Citation Jia, Ning 1977-, "Freedom in middle French Enlightenment : interpreted through a picturesque garden." (2010). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 687. https://doi.org/10.18297/etd/687 This Doctoral Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository. This title appears here courtesy of the author, who has retained all other copyrights. For more information, please contact [email protected]. FREEDOM IN MIDDLE FRENCH ENLIGHTENMENT: INTERPRETED THROUGH A PICTURESQUE GARDEN By Ning Jia B.A., Shandong University, 2000 M.A., Beijing Foreign Studies University, 2003 A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Louisville in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Humanities University of Louisville Louisville, Kentucky August 2010 ------- Copyright 2010 by Ning Jia All rights reserved FREEDOM IN MIDDLE FRENCH ENLIGHTENMENT: INTERPRETED THROUGH A PICTURESQUE GARDEN By NingJia B.A., Shandong University, 2000 M.A., Beijing Foreign Studies University, 2003 A Dissertation Approved on July 27, 2010 by the following Dissertation Committee: Dissertation Director ii DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated to my family, the handsome and the lovely.
    [Show full text]
  • Robert Smithson and the Anglo-American Picturesque
    164 Robert Smithson and the Anglo-American Picturesque Timothy D. Martin To speak of an Anglo-American connection, as opposed to, say, a French or German connection, is an invitation to speak about different types of enjoyment, different cultural matrices in which to interpret, where interpretation itself is a type of enjoyment. On the subject of Anglo-American cultural exchange, it might be productive to look at American land art as it relates to the British picturesque park. This, at least, was the view of Robert Smithson, a view that is developed particularly in his last essay, “Frederick Law Olmsted and the Dialectical Landscape,” published in the February 1973 issue of Artforum (figs. 1 a–c). In Smithson’s view, land art was a continuation of a Figure 1a Robert Smithson (American, 1938–1973), “Frederick Law Olmsted and the Dialectical Landscape,” Artforum (February 1973), 62. © Estate of Robert Smithson/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY Martin, “Robert Smithson and the Anglo-American Picturesque,” Anglo-American Exchange in Postwar Sculpture, 1945–1975 (Getty, 2011) PROOF 1 2 3 4 5 6 165 Robert Smithson and the Anglo-American Picturesque Figure 1b Robert Smithson (American, 1938–1973), “Frederick Law Olmsted and the Dialectical Landscape,” Artforum (February 1973), 63. © Estate of Robert Smithson/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY Figure 1c Robert Smithson (American, 1938–1973), “Frederick Law Olmsted and the Dialectical Landscape,” Artforum (February 1973), 65. © Estate of Robert Smithson/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY Martin, “Robert Smithson and the Anglo-American Picturesque,” Anglo-American Exchange in Postwar Sculpture, 1945–1975 (Getty, 2011) PROOF 1 2 3 4 5 6 166 Timothy D.
    [Show full text]
  • The Picturesque and the Homogenisation of Empire
    Volume y No. 1 The BRITISH AKT Journal The picturesque and the homogenisation of Empire Jeffrey Auerbach t is more than a century since JR Seeley remarked in The Expansion of England (1H83) that the British Empire Ideveloped in 'a fit of absence of mind'.' The rea,sons for and motives unt.lerlying its expansion, whether ptilitical. diplomatic, economic, social, intellectual, or religious, are fairly well known, however much they continue tt) be debated.- In recent years scholars have also begun to explore the impact of the empire on the so-called metropolitan centre. es[xrcially ¡politically.^ and have even questioned the ver\ boundaries between métropole and periphery' particularly in the cultural realni.^ Yet serious and fundamental questions remain about the place of the empire in the British mint!. How- did Britons conceive of and represent their empire, especially during the 19th century, the period of its greatest expansi()n? How did they come to regard it as being more unified than it actually was at the administrative level?^ What, if an>'thing, gave the empire coherence, especially in the half-century bef(ïre the steamship and the electric telegraph? How did the individual regions of the empire - 'one continent, a hundred peninsulas, five huntlred promontories, a thousand lakes, two thousand ri\'ers. ten thousand ¡.slands'"^» - become pan of an imperial whole? Viliat were the vectors of empire, and if, as man>' scholars have recently suggested, they should not be characterized in metre)["H)litan peripheral terms, then on what basis? The Victorian imagination constructed the British Enijiirc through a variety of cultural forms.
    [Show full text]
  • Newman, C.E. 2014 V.1.Pdf
    Mapping the Late Medieval and Post Medieval Landscape of Cumbria Two Volumes Volume 1: Text Caron Egerton Newman Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of History, Classics and Archaeology Newcastle University Submitted: June 2014 Abstract This study is an analysis of the development of rural settlement patterns and field systems in Cumbria from the later medieval period through to the late eighteenth century. It uses documentary, cartographic and archaeological evidence. This evidence is interpreted utilising the techniques of historic landscape characterisation (HLC), map regression and maps created by the author, summarising and synthesising historical and archaeological data. The mapped settlement data, in particular, has been manipulated using tools of graphic analysis available within a Graphical Information System (GIS). The initial product is a digital map of Cumbria in the late eighteenth century, based on the county-scale maps of that period, enhanced with information taken from enclosure maps and awards, and other post medieval cartographic sources. From this baseline, an interpretation of the late medieval landscape was developed by adding information from other data sources, such as place names and documentary evidence. The approach was necessarily top-down and broad brush, in order to provide a landscape-scale, sub-regional view. This both addresses the deficiencies within the standard historical approach to landscape development, and complements such approaches. Standard historical approaches are strong on detail, but can be weak when conclusions based on localised examples are extrapolated and attributed to the wider landscape. The methodology adopted by this study allows those local analyses to be set within a broader landscape context, providing another tool to use alongside more traditional approaches to historic landscape studies.
    [Show full text]
  • Price and Gilpin in the Cottage Garden: Reading the Picturesque in Late Victorian Watercolours Lauren Palmor
    Lauren Palmor Price and Gilpin in the Cottage Garden: Reading the Picturesque in Late Victorian Watercolours Lauren Palmor he typical middle-class parlour of the Victorian era contained many objects that were in “good taste,” as defined by the prevailing rules for furnishing and decorating Ta proper, prosperous household. These rules appeared in numerous handbooks written by self-appointed arbiters, mostly middle-class wives and mothers, for the benefit of their peers.1 The wide-ranging advice found within included instructions on how to prepare supper, decorate fireplace mantels, and dress windows. According to these guides, the parlour’s plush furniture, warm hearth, and heavy curtains served as fitting complements to the display of the family’s picture collection.2 Small watercolours and oil paintings depicting genre scenes would often appear among these aspirational assemblages of art, and they were indicative of the increasing popularity of the theme of the idealised representation of cottage life in the early-nineteenth century, both in Britain and in the United States. Pictures that showed either interior or exterior cottage scenes often evoked a warm domestic bliss. They were in vogue throughout the nineteenth century and their popularity continued into the Edwardian era. Scenes of the rural garden cottage, as well as the larger category of domestic genre subjects, can be assessed by considering traditional theories of the picturesque. Thad Logan summarises these theories thus: “Rural scenes of all kinds were very popular subjects, as were animals and children, whether the ‘picturesque’ children of the urban and rural poor or the frequently sentimentalised children of the middle and upper classes.
    [Show full text]