An Archaeology of Perception: Verbal Descriptions of Architecture in Travel Writings
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An Archaeology of Perception: Verbal Descriptions of Architecture in Travel Writings Annekatrin Hultzsch PhD Architectural History & Theory The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London I, Annekatrin Hultzsch, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. 2 Abstract This thesis relates two fields, the history of perception and that of language, to each other in order to argue that the ways in which we verbally describe buildings are inherently linked to the way in which we look at and make sense of them. It will show that what we understand when seeing, what we know to have seen, is shaped by the means we find to express and communicate it. The subject matter of this research is the unfamiliar architectural object as it is perceived, described and imagined while travelling. Contextualising and linking various descriptions of built spaces in travel writings at distinct moments between the seventeenth and twentieth century, perceptual modes of British and German travellers in Italy and England are mapped out. Special emphasis is placed on the context of the seventeenth century, and the birth of Empiricism, which is argued to have led to a new way of perceiving as well as describing the built environment. Texts investigated include travel diaries, letters, guidebooks as well as novels by authors such as John Evelyn, John Bargrave, Daniel Defoe, Tobias Smollett, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Jacob Burckhardt, John Ruskin and Nikolaus Pevsner. Through an archaeology of perception, local and often fragmentary narratives are constructed - ‘snapshots’ which focus on past moments rather than providing an extensive historical panorama. Processes of rendering, ordering, thinking, looking and reading the perceived are submitted to methods drawn from the following fields: the disciplines of history - the histories of art, sciences and literature - as well as the cognitive sciences, particularly cognitive linguistics, alongside the more specific concerns of architectural history and theory. Modes of perception located and retraced include notions of immediate and detached recording, of fragmented and vectorial structuring, of emotional versus truth- bearing seeing, of a pure and hyperreal looking as well as of itemizing against visual description. 3 Contents List of Illustrations .................................................................................................. 5 Acknowledgments ................................................................................................... 6 Introduction ............................................................................................................. 7 1 Rendering Buildings into Words: Methods of Verbal Representation in Evelyn and Pevsner (1644-65, 1947-74) ........................................................... 29 History and nature of Evelyn's diary .................................................................... 31 Text work ............................................................................................................. 41 Writing The Buildings of England in the 1950s .................................................. 52 Immediate and detached recording ...................................................................... 59 2 Ordering the Unfamiliar: Curious Collections of Words and Things in Travel Journals (1645-75) ................................................................................. 61 Words and things ................................................................................................. 63 Curious parts and the whole ................................................................................. 78 The world in the mind .......................................................................................... 98 Fragmented and vectorial structure .................................................................... 108 3 Thinking in Metaphor: Figurative Conceptualising in Evelyn and Ruskin (1644-65, 1849-52) ............................................................................................ 111 Understanding through metaphor ...................................................................... 112 Metaphors of perception .................................................................................... 126 Adjectival Nouns ............................................................................................... 132 Emotional vs. truth-bearing seeing .................................................................... 135 4 Looking through the Lens: Optical and Epistemological Tools in Evelyn, Goethe and Burckhardt (1644-65, 1786, 1855) .............................................. 138 Evelyn ................................................................................................................ 139 Goethe ................................................................................................................ 150 Burckhardt ......................................................................................................... 167 Pure and hyperreal seeing .................................................................................. 189 5 Reading Lists, Guides and Novels: Visual Description in Defoe, Smollett and the Country-House Guidebook (1719-1771) .................................................. 192 Describing by naming in Daniel Defoe's writings ............................................. 194 Describing by directing in country-house guidebooks ...................................... 213 Describing by looking in Tobias Smollett's writings ......................................... 225 Itemizing vs. visual description ......................................................................... 249 Conclusion ........................................................................................................... 250 Bibliography ........................................................................................................ 259 Primary sources .................................................................................................. 259 Secondary Sources ............................................................................................. 264 4 List of Illustrations Title page A copy of The Buildings of England: Somersetshire in Wells Cathedral Photograph by Carolina Rodriguez Grenci, August 2006 1 'Itinerary of observation' Francois Schott, Itinerarii Italiæ rerumq. Romanorum libri tres a Francisco Schotto … ex antiquis nouisque scriptoribus editi, & ab Hieronymo Capugnano … aucti. Editio quarta, ab Andrea Schotto … recensita (Antuerpiae: ex Officina Plantiniana, 1625), p. 10v-11r 2 Temple of Jupiter in Pompeii photograph on cardboard Photosammlung Jacob Burckhardt , Bibliothek der Öffentlichen Kunstsammlung Basel, Handschriftenabteilung der Universtiätsbibliothek Basel, folder 46, no. 2160 3 Palazzo Madama in Turin photograph on cardboard Photosammlung Jacob Burckhardt , Bibliothek der Öffentlichen Kunstsammlung Basel, Handschriftenabteilung der Universtiätsbibliothek Basel, folder 42, no. 1605 4 Frescos in the Camera degli Sposi by Mantegna, Mantua photograph on cardboard Photosammlung Jacob Burckhardt , Bibliothek der Öffentlichen Kunstsammlung Basel, Handschriftenabteilung der Universtiätsbibliothek Basel, folder 9A, no. 1064 The original version of this thesis contained more than 60 illustrations. For copyright reasons most of these had to be removed from this edited version as requested by the regulations of University College London. 5 Acknowledgments First of all I would like to thank my supervisor Professor Adrian Forty. It was under his direction in the Masters in Architectural History at the Bartlett School of Architecture, that my previously vague interest in perception was encouraged and channeled into specific projects and finally this PhD thesis. Since then, he has always been a challenging, thought-provoking and trusted advisor. Likewise, thanks to Professor Iain Borden for his supportive second supervision of my thesis. Dr Barbara Penner and Professor Jane Rendell, as well as all attendants of the regular Research Conversation seminars at the Bartlett, have equally inspired my work in manifold discussions throughout the years. In particular, I would like to thank Emma Cheatle, Lea-Catherine Szacka, Tilo Amhoff and Evan Larbi. Much of this thesis was researched and written in various libraries and archives, the staff of which I am indebted to: besides the British Library and the Warburg Institute in London, I spent happy days exploring the treasures of the Canadian Center for Architecture in Montreal, the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles as well as the Canterbury Cathedral Archives, the University of Bristol Library Special Collections and the National Monuments Record Centre in Swindon. Dominik Hunger at the Universitätsbibliothek Basel helped me with the Burckhardt Archive. None of all this would have been possible without generous funding: my thanks go to the Royal Institute of British Architects, the Arts and Humanities Research Council as well as the Bartlett's Architectural Research Fund. I would never have set out for any project as big as this without the unconditional support of my parents who taught me to do what I love. And most of all, Braulio and Emilia, this is for you. 6 Introduction This thesis stems from a longstanding curiosity about questions of perception and about the