The Aesthetics of Nature

Abstract

The conception of nature underwent a dramatic transformation during the eighteenth century. The rise of consumer culture transformed the natural world, be it a fashionable picturesque site, a landscape garden or landscape painting, into an object of consumption.1 Nature was increasingly seen as a locale for relief and regeneration, as an antidote to the rapid industrialisation and capitalisation of the world. Not surprisingly, such familiar terms as ‘nature-lover’ and ‘nature poetry’ date from the late eighteenth century.2 Nature turned into an object of aesthetic pleasure, or more precisely, of conspicuous aesthetic consumption. One aspect of this phenomenon was an increasingidealisation of ‘unspoiled nature’ in the second half of the century. It was duringthis period that the view of the Alps was dramatically transformed from hideous heaps into sublime mountains.3 The writings of Edmund Burke and William Gilpin were hugely influential in establishing the taste for appreciatingnatural landscape.4 Such aesthetic categories as the sublime, the beautiful and the picturesque not only became the fashionable topics of the day, but actually encouraged and enticed people to travel in order to experience nature in an original and elemental state. Towards the end of the century, more and more people went on a tour to see sublime or picturesque sites ± if not the Alps, then attractions closer to home, such as the Lake District, the Wye Valley and South Wales, the Scottish Highlands, North Wales and the New Forest.5 The rise and rise of consumer culture enabled middleclass people to become mobile, in every sense of the word. Their passion for picturesque tours was one aspect of the bourgeois culture of affluence.KeywordsParadise LostEnglish PoetryAesthetic PleasureGrand TourEnglish PoetThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.