Picturesque Garden Research Articles

Landscape Narratives: The Sacro Monte d’Orta (Italy)

ABSTRACT The Holy Mountains, or Sacri Monti, in Northern Italy are devotional places created for pilgrims during the Counter-Reformation. Their design is based on the sequence of a series of chapels arranged in the landscape, which narrate the life of Jesus or a Saint. Recently, scholars analysing the artistic features of the Holy Mountains focused on their paintings and sculptures, while the landscape design methods on which the pathways are based have been little studied. This paper addresses this lacuna by focusing on, one of the earliest examples, the Sacro Monte of Orta, and investigating its strong relationship with the landscape and the innovative design method behind the project. The analysis is based on the collection of historical documents and the physical exploration and related visual and photographic interpretation of the still well-maintained place. The research revealed a series of strong similarities between the design principles of the Sacro Monte of Orta and the picturesque gardens realised in England and France some decades after. The article aims to provide more insights regarding the Sacri Monti, interpreting them as cinematic sequences into the landscape and suggesting them as early picturesque devices.

영국소설에 나타난 영국식 정원

This essay tries to prove that an English novel is a good textbook, in teaching English Garden, one of the major English cultural issues. English Garden, specifically, English Landscape Garden or Picturesque Garden is a critical issue in that it contributed to forming English Identity as rural England in the period of Industrial Revolution and Enclosure. To achieve that goal, it first examines the ideas and major characteristics of eighteenth century English Garden, including Lancelot Brown’s picturesque landscape design which was very popular from mid-eighteenth to the late eighteenth century in England. Next, it searches the descriptions of Landscape Garden in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, which is set in rural England in the late eighteenth century. Lastly, it connects the characteristics of Brown’s Landscape Garden, main features of which are spontaneity, naturalness, emphasis on sentiments and the symbol of liberty to the representation of the novel’s main characters, Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy, and their change and growth.

The Critical Agency of Full-Size Models, from Michelangelo and Bernini to the Picturesque Garden

This article maps and investigates the practice of 1:1 modeling between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries to demonstrate its critical agency in emphasizing vision over proportional and mathematical tools of composition, in promoting innovative and interdisciplinary approaches, and in encouraging a general circulation of ideas, techniques, and forms between architecture, sculpture, and garden design. Generally applied to solve exceptional cruxes, full-size models were mostly developed by artists like Michelangelo Buonarroti and Giovan Lorenzo Bernini, who were both sculptors and architects and who helped create a specific operative tradition later also adopted in parallel fields, such as the picturesque garden design endorsed by the marquis de Girardin. While clients and public require denotative detailed mock-ups, rough full-size models can provide their creators with both visual control of the design development on-site, sometimes promoting a “direct forming” approach to architectural design, and heuristic explorations that may lead them to unpredictable solutions.

ИССЛЕДОВАНИЕ ГЕОМЕТРИИ В ТВОРЧЕСТВЕ АРХИТЕКТОРА АНТОНИО ГАУДИ

Exploring the work of Antonio Gaudi and his knowledge in descriptive geometry, which develops a spatial imagination, we notice the use of lines, shapes, volumetric geometric images in architectural creativity. In his early work, Antonio Gaudi designs buildings under the influence of the Moorish style, using geometric shapes and lines that emphasize Arabic motifs in the patterns. So in the house of Vissenty, made in the style of modernism, he applied the idea of a self-repeating element of a simple form toa more complex one. In a fragment of the gallery of the city park Guell, which is an example of the urban style, Gaudi used the transformation of one surface to another, while showing the smoothness of lines and the accuracy of surface construction and without violating their regularity.Combining various forms in one building or structure, Gaudi perfectly mastered the geometry of the curved lines of the second and third order in space. To achieve a similar effect of shaping, scientists tried in the 60s of the XX century by constructing curved lines and Bezier surfaces. Gaudi achieved a similar effect of shaping in a practical way.n his work, he used cylindrical, conical and spherical surfaces that smoothly passed one into another, as well as the surfaces of Catalan: a hyperbolic paraboloid, conoid, cylindroid. In creating volumetric interior plastic, the curved lines with a kinematic movement created bizarre shapes of the ceiling, smoothly turning into other geometric shapes of the walls.The staircasein one of the towers of the Sagrada Familia is a geometric image of a helicoid, where a complex geometric shape is taken as the generatrix, and the guides are two helises -cylindrical helical lines of different radii.In the geometric construction of a direct or inclined helicoid, it is necessary to have two guides and a movement step, which can be set mathematically. In any case, such a surface remains one of the most unique in nature because the helicoid is a minimal surface.Park Guell is located in Barcelona on the Carmel hill, an area of 17.2 hectares. It was built in the first half of the last century. The customer, who was Eusebi Güell.He huge park complex includes a territory with residential buildings and comfortable relaxation areas, amazing picturesque gardens, quaint shady alleys, multi-tiered terraces, colorful flower arrangements, winding grottoes and gazebos.Working on a park project, Gaudi was inspired by the beauties of the surrounding nature of the Carmel Upland and its picturesque landscapes. In the project, walking paths stretched across the entire park, the mountains were not specially cut from the terrain to emphasize the natural landscape of nature.Necessary for the construction of the elements of the park: poles and beams, were decorated under palm trees. Despite the fact that the height difference was 60 meters, the master skillfully beat the landscape with bizarre forms, emphasizing the desire of a person from simple to sublime.If you delve into history, you can see that the construction work is divided into three stages: the strengthening of hills and slopes with the arrangement of terraces for curved paths and the erection of walls; the construction of a colonnade, a market and mansions; building a bench in the shape of a snake. To date, all the facilities of the complex have been preserved in their original form. At the entrance to the park there are two houses resembling fabulous gingerbread houses, the walls of which arelined with ceramic fragments. The facade of eachhouse is decorated with a medallion with the inscription “Park Guell”. In Gaudi’s work, the “hundred columns” hall, which is inscribed in the landscape of the hill, is a terrace with 86 columns of 6 meters each. These columns support a ceiling with a bizarre shape of complex geometric surfaces of revolution. The plastic of the ceiling vault is made of modern concrete of the time, the decoration of which is made of ceramic in the form of a mosaic. In practical work, Antonio Gaudi took a self-repeating algorithm that developed in space in the form necessary for his design. Gaudi perfectly mastered the skills and knowledge of the discipline called Descriptive Geometry. Developing the spatial imagination, this discipline offers us all kinds of lines, geometric shapes and three-dimensional bodies, for the embodiment of the ideas of masters of architecture, one of which is Antonio Gaudi.

Of Particle Systems and Picturesque Ontologies: Landscape, Nature, and Realism in Video Games

Landscape is much more difficult to model than architecture or interiors, and it almost always provides the benchmark for graphic realism in video games. Many of the qualities that define graphic realism in contemporary video games – visual detail, dynamic lighting and weather effects, particle effects such as fire, smoke and mist – are associated with the appearance and behaviour of “natural” assets. Such assets are widely regarded as representations of ‘external’ nature, and the history of video games is typically charted along a trajectory that includes painting, film, and photography. This essay examines a category of landscape representation that has been largely overlooked by video game scholars: the eighteenth century Picturesque landscape garden. Nature, in the Picturesque garden, was assumed and constructed as an entity and/or a set of processes beyond human control, but not necessarily exterior to representation itself. As I argue, graphic realism in video games assumes and constructs nature in an analogous way, overlaying a highly structured three dimensional framework with procedurally generated forms that are largely beyond the designer’s control. Like the Picturesque landscape garden, the video game is not a straightforward representation of “external nature”. Nor, as I argue, is agency limited to the perception of autonomy and control within the game – it is distributed, as it was for the visitor to the Picturesque garden, across human subjects, spaces of representation, and the physical world.

THE INFLUENCE OF NATURAL LANDSCAPE AND CHINESE TRADITIONS TO TRANSFORMATION OF ART NOUVEAU AND NATIONAL ROMANTICISM ARCHITECTURE IN CHINA

Introduction The actuality of this theme connects with problems of function, protection and restoration of the Art-nouveau (A.N.) heritage in Chinese towns, which consists more than 200 objects. Necessary to mean the scientific works of Liu Daping and Van Yang [7], A.Ivanova [1], T. Johston [5], B. Lane Miller [6], S. Levoshko [3], M. Marinelli, L.Sadovski [8], Wang Chaolu [11] and Yuan Binjiu [12]. and many others, who marked the domination role of Chinese natural and cultural conditions to forming of versions Art-nouveau and North National Romanticism in China. But in their scientific researches in whole describes the architectural objects and more less the problems of existing of this objects in natural environment. That’s why necessary to mark the main role of Buddhism and Taoism for forming the ancient Chinese landscape traditions, because later this Chinese original traditions led to change the European A.N. architecture in Chinese settlements. Methods The aim of this research was to analyze the process of transformation the Art-nouveau (A.N.) and North National Romanticism in China and the role of natural landscape in this process. The main methods of investigation was the method of the systematic-structural analyze/ With this method were determined the main role of natural landscape and Chinese traditions for impression of the A.N. objects in China. Results The main changes between the European A.N. and Chinese version of A.N. connected with differences in natural landscape. The European objects were situated in the regular town-planning system without trees and parks. The main feature of traditional Chinese architecture forming in continue of centuries was the organic connection between nature and building with the domination of natural landscape. That is why the town-planning situation in Chinese centres of A.N. and National Romanticism architecture differ so strongly from the European town-planning situation. Chinese objects in most cases situated in parks and in architectural complex dominate the natural landcsape with picturesque hills, exotic trees and flowers and lakes with golden fishes. The specific features of nature in different parts of China determined the impression of A.N. objects (the A.N. objects and objects of North National Romanticism in German settlement Qingdao with subtropical climate differ strongly from similar objects at Russian settlements Harbin, Shenyang and Dalyan in Nortern-East part of China). Really, the changing landscape was the main reason for transformation the European architectural style for Chinese conditions. Conclusions The scientific novelty of research: – were analyzed in complex and argued the role of nature conditions and natural landscape in process of transformation the Art-nouveau architecture in Chinese settlments, the A.N. objects in China surround the picturesque gardens with exotic plants; - was determined at the base of methodology of system-structural analyze that the A.N. objects in China differs strongly from the European examples of A.N. and North National romanticism not only in forms but more in natural environment. There is the original situation of existing the brutal gray objects of North National romanticism with granite blocks among the color Chinese landscape, that why its determine the protection not only the A.N. buildings but the natural arrangement too; - the existing of A.N. objects in China along the natural landscape led to transformation this territory into the protective national parks and touristic zones. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.sace.20.3.18961

“It was a sweet view – sweet to the eye and the mind.” Jane Austen og det pittoreske landskab

It is obvious in Jane Austen’s novels that she was interested in the ongoing debate of ’the picturesque garden’, and in all her novels the characters are discussing how to look at the landscape, how to ‘improve’ the estates according to certain rules, and how taste and moral are connected to each other. The picturesque garden is inspired by paintings from the 17th century by Claude Lorraine and Nicolas Poussin, and in that way a clear line can be drawn back to Theocritus and Virgil, who introduced topoi as ‘locus amoenus’ and the ‘pastoral’. This article is examining how the relation is between these topoi, which are ideal landscapes that only exist in literature and painting, and the discussions of the design of real physical landscapes of contemporary England. It is difficult to decide on which side Austen was in the discussions of the picturesque. The article concludes that Austen’s voice is to be heard in the narrative, the development of the characters, and that she ends up with an attempt to reach an authentic relationship with landscape and nature that foreshadows a romantic feeling of nature. An appendix shows the later reception of Austen’s relationship to landscape, by analyzing a scene from modern films based on Jane Austen’s novels.

Nature Transformed: English Landscape Gardens and Theatrum Mundi

Nature Transformed: English Landscape Gardens and <i>Theatrum Mundi</i>

Cosmopolitan time in the Jardin de Monceau

If a picturesque garden can be made into a country of illusions, why should we refuse to do it? Illusions only provide enjoyment; if liberty guides them, let art direct them, and one will never be ...

픽처레스크 정원에 나타난 촉지적 지각 - 18세기 영국 픽처레스크 정원을 중심으로 -

시각중심주의에 편향된 근대의 광학적 메커니즘은 시각의 다채로운 기능을 간과하고 추상적이며, 이성적인 눈으로 사물을 판단하고 공간을 조직함으로써 눈이 사물을 더듬는 기능에 대해서는 간과하였다. 최근에는 시각의 이분법적 지각체계를 넘어서 복합지각에 의해 다른 감각과의 소통을 통한 다양한 경험을 유도하고 있다. 촉지적 지각은 시각뿐만 아니라 다양한 감각과의 상호작용을 통해 주체로 하여금 신체를 동반한 체험을 유도하며, 물성이 가지고 있는 특질과 인간의 다양한 감각적 자극을 꾀하는 역동적인 시각이다. 본 논문은 주체의 능동적 체험을 유도하는 촉지적 지각의 이론적 배경을 고찰하여 촉지적 지각의 주요한 특징을 도출하고 촉지적 지각의 특징이 픽처레스크 정원에서 어떠한 방식으로 나타나는지를 살펴보고자 한다. 촉지적 지각의 주요한 특징을 고찰하기 위해 철학과 미학사에서 아돌프 힐데브란트의 시각론이 알로이스 리글과 빌헬름 보링거, 발터 벤야민, 모르스 메를로 퐁티, 질 들뢰즈에 의해 각각 어떻게 발전, 확장, 재해석되는지를 탐구한다. 이로서 촉지적 지각과 시각적 지각 방식의 주요차이점을 분석하고 촉지적 지각이 가지는 특성을 도출한다. 이후, 촉지적 지각의 특성이 픽처레스크 정원에 어떻게 나타나는지 고찰하기 위해 고전적 정원을 시각적 지각으로 픽처레스크 정원을 촉지적 지각으로 각각 설정하여 분석하고 앞서 도출된 촉지적 지각의 특성을 픽처레스크 정원에 투영하여 고찰한다. 본 연구를 통해 도출된 픽처레스크 정원에 나타난 촉지적 지각에 대한 연구결과는 다음과 같다. 시각적 지각과 대별되는 촉지적 지각의 주요차이점은 경계의 모호함과 애매함, 동적시점의 생성, 불확정적 동선에 의한 운동성 유발, 지각 불가능성에 의한 낯설음과 숭고미로 요약할 수 있다. 픽처레스크 정원에서 경계의 모호함과 애매함은 평면의 불규칙함과 비대칭 요소, 단일시점의 거부로 나타나며, 동적시점의 생성은 서사적 구조의 도입과 회화의 장면구성기법을 재현하면서 기존 정원에 없는 전경, 중경, 원경 요소를 만들면서 공간을 중첩시킴으로써 생성된다. 불확정적 동선에 의한 운동성 유발은 분기하는 동선에 의해 형성되며, 지각 불가능성에 의한 낯설음과 숭고미는 정원에서 다양한 요소의 활용과 '거칠음'과 '불규칙함', '폐허'의 도입으로 나타난다. Modern optical mechanisms slanted toward Ocular-centrism have neglected diverse functions of vision, judged objects in abstract and binary perspectives, and organized spaces accordingly, there by neglecting the function of eyes groping objects. Recently, various experiences have been induced through communication with other senses by the complex perception beyond the binary perception system of vision. Haptic perception is dynamic vision that induces accompanying bodily experiences through interaction among the various senses; it recognizes the characteristics of material properties and various sensitive stimulations of human beings. This study elaborates on the major features of haptic perception by examining the theoretical background of this concept, which stimulates the active experience of the subject and determines how characteristics of haptic perception are displayed in picturesque gardens. In order to identify the major features of haptic perception, this study examines how Adolf Hildebrand's theory of vision is developed, expanded, and reinterpreted by Alois Riegl, Wilhelm Worringer, Walter Benjamin, Maurice Merleau Ponty, and Gilles Deleuze in the histories of philosophy and aesthetics. Based thereon, the core differences in haptic perception models and visual perception models are analyzed, and the features of haptic perception are identified. Then, classical gardens are set for visual perception and picturesque gardens are set for haptic perception so that the features from haptic perception identified previously are projected onto the picturesque gardens. The research results drawn from this study regarding features of haptic perception presented in picturesque gardens are as follows. The core differences of haptic perception in contrast to visual perception can be summarized as ambiguity and obscureness of boundaries, generation of dynamic perspectives, induction of motility by indefinite circulation, and strangeness and sublime beauty by the impossibility of perception. In picturesque gardens, the ambiguity and obscureness of boundaries are presented in the irregularity and asymmetric elements of planes and the rejection of a single view, and the generation of dynamic perspectives results from the adoption of narrative structure and overlapping of spaces through the creation of complete views, medium range views, and distant views, which the existing gardens lack. Thus, the scene composition technique is reproduced. The induction of motility by indefinite circulation is created by branching circulation, and strangeness and sublime beauty are presented through the use of various elements and the adoption of 'roughness', 'irregularity', and 'ruins' in the gardens.

The Pleasures of Surprise: The Picturesque Garden in France

Reexamining the eighteenth-century French picturesque garden, the author argues that patrons, designers, and theoreticians appropriated the most seductive form of entertainment – the gambling session – to animate the picturesque garden stroll. The garden emerges as a sophisticated game where natural and artificial qualities of the designed landscapes were geared to produce the “pleasures of surprise.” Strolling thus emerges as a multi-sensorial experience predicated on the performance of surprise. The act of being surprised was transient, an evanescent reaction that startled conventional appearances, but it is exactly this ephemeral moment that was considered emotionally authentic. The performance of surprise thus re-ordered the sensibilities of both patrons and visitors so that the picturesque garden became a venue to develop a “sixth” sense, Taste, the ability to exercise aesthetic discernment.

The Gothic Picturesque Garden and the Historical Sense

The ruins that appear in Piranesi's engravings can be seen as the metaphor for a social system which has disappeared but remains visible in its ruins. On these ruins a new system is erected which must take into account past tradition. You never build in a vacuum, even in law, but everything evolves. It is also Burke's idea in Reflections on the Revolution in France , where he criticizes the fact that the French have done away with their past instead of constructing and bringing about reforms from within a well assessed system. The ruins may epitomize the Roman juridical system upon which all subsequent juridical systems have been rooted. The Justinian code has been the basis for all systems, also for the Anglo-Saxon one, even if in the course of time the latter has distanced itself from the Roman system. This symbolic passage from times past to modern times is metaphorized by the Gothic picturesque garden, which plays with a taste for ruins, with the sublime sense of delight, so as to bring about a re-empowerment of a new juridical system.

Le Nouveau Jardin Pittoresque: ethics, aesthetics and garden design in Belgium (1913–1940)

Le Nouveau Jardin Pittoresque (The New Picturesque Garden) association was founded in 1913 to ‘renew and popularize garden art’ in Belgium. Originally, the emancipation of the lower classes was put forward as an important task; the association acted as a platform for those who were interested in the ethical role of garden design. Taking its journal Le Nouveau Jardin Pittoresque as the main source, this article investigates what was understood by the ‘new picturesque garden’ , why this type of garden was considered a suitable instrument for popularization and how the addressed audience evolved. The main argument is that the focus of Le Nouveau Jardin Pittoresque shifted from ethics to aesthetics during the interwar period. Under the impulse of landscape architect Jules Buyssens the emphasis moved towards the design of private gardens for the emerging middle class and away from the social role of the garden in the city.

De/framed visions: reading two collections of gardens at the Xi'an International Horticultural Exposition

In landscape, we form meaning through placefulness; as Martin Heidegger observed, ‘“place” places man in that dimension which reveals the revealing meaning of being’. 1 Gardens infer a more acceler...

Marie Antoinette의 초상화를 통해 본 18세기 후기 여성 복식의 변화와 계몽주의 사상 - 1770-1793을 중심으로 -

This thesis takes an aim to investigate the relationship between the costume and enlightenment ideology by studying the change of costume, and reviewing the portraiture of Queen Marie Antoinette. The method of this research is to select the 29 pieces among the portraitures from 1770 to 1793, and to analyze the headdress, shape of robes and ornaments. The results are as follows. The first period(1770-1774): The costume in this period of Dauphin of France is described as vivid, and simple like her characters, and also represents her active lifestyle. The ideology of equality between the two sexes from the enlightenment slightly influence the costumes seen inside the portrait of Dauphin. The second period (1775-1779): This is the early period of the Queen`s enthronement and also before her childbirth. The relatively small number of portraits showed her as an authoritative figure because her skirts were expanded with huge panier, the waist were tightened with corset, and her headdress was enlarged. Thus, this period could not be defined as the one of enlightenment philosophies in light of the persistent unsanitary construction of costumes distorting the body. The third period(1780-1789): There are many portraits depicting the Queen and her children. It is noteworthy that the English style picturesque garden was illustrated as a background while the costume was simple and sanitary, both being affected by the enlightenment. The last period(1789-1793): This is the period between the French revolution and the death of the Queen. The form of costumes was transformed into the neoclassic style, headdress was reduced in size, and was simplified as a result of complete change of costume for the enlightenment. This research is to be interpreted as a tool of study about the relationship of costume, society and ideological streams and also be a means of elucidating the contemporary times in view of the past ones.

‘Sybaris is the land where it wishes to take us’: luxurious insertions in Picturesque gardens

Towards the end of the eighteenth century, the discovery of Pompeii attracted European aristocrats to include the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (Southern Italy) on their Grand Tour itinerary. Similarly, Sybaris, an ancient Greek colonial polis also directed aristocratic attention to the region. French painter and engraver Jean-Claude Richard de Saint-Non and his entourage of architects most famously documented the ruinous Sybaris and exported its imagery back to France. In parallel with these developments, interest in recreating sybaritic images within luxurious Picturesque gardens arose. Drawing upon a pair of garden case studies, Monsieur de Monville's Broken Column House (1780–81) at Désert de Retz, Chambourcy, and Queen Marie-Antoinette's hameau (1783) within the Petit Trianon Gardens at Versailles, this paper examines the sybaritic images, their influences and the ethical values of the creators of these gardens. Monville and Marie-Antoinette were, for instance, charged of excess. This paper is concerned with the way in which these sybaritic places were configured and how they encapsulated a mythic Sybaris, and argues that the charges of excess levelled against their creators partly stemmed from the unusual and sybaritic effects to be found at their private entertainment gardens.

THE JESUIT CONTRIBUTION TO ORIENTAL INFLUENCE ON EUROPEAN GARDENS

The essay focuses on 17th and 18th-centuries accounts of Chinese gardens written by Jesuit missionaries to China. It discusses the lasting impact of those descriptions on the development of the picturesque garden in England and France during the second half of the 18th century.

BOOK REVIEW: Amy M. King.BLOOM: THE BOTANICAL VERNACULAR IN THE ENGLISH NOVEL. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Reviewed by: Bloom: The Botanical Vernacular in the English Novel Barbara T. Gates (bio) Bloom: The Botanical Vernacular in the English Novel, by Amy M. King; pp. xxiii + 265. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2003, £31.00, $49.95. In Bloom: The Botanical Vernacular in the English Novel, Amy M. King sets out to show how the Linnaean system of botanical classification and its attendant language influenced English literature. King argues that Linnaeus's work led to a "botanical vernacular," a cultural language that extends well beyond scientific frontiers and into the world of novels. She reminds us that Linnaeus's system, dealing as it does with metaphors of sexual courtship and marriage, applied to plants a language used to discuss human beings and that in a post-Linnaean reversal, plant terms were more commonly applied to human sexual interactions. Primarily, King is concerned with the term "bloom" as it characterizes young women who have become sexually mature. As she explains it, "bloom" can refer both to innocent and provocative behaviors; in so doing, it can also help readers better understand key eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novels (which King calls "classical novels"), both their descriptions and their narratives. To this reviewer, King's argument seems both obvious and a stretch. After Linnaeus, botanical language was indeed used as code for human behaviors, most particularly in sexual primers where the analogy between plants and their parts and human sexual reproduction was carefully drawn. A botanical vernacular—and King's term is a good one—developed in part through increasing amateur interest in botany and filtered into many discourses. Tracing it into nonscientific avenues could offer a fascinating linguistic journey. But as King extends her metaphor to encompass one novel after another, in each case probing a "workable figure that could represent marital sexuality without transgressing the boundaries of decorum" (7), the reader's own bloom can [End Page 510] quickly fade. Does this botanical vernacular consist of only one word and its variants? Is it mainly another way of talking about the marriage plot or, along with gesture and action, of coding texts for readers in the know? And if so—and King does relate her subject to the marriage plot—how deep can her metaphoric readings take us? To a "bloom narrative," seems King's answer (4, and elsewhere), but how effective is she in showing us just what such a narrative is, or why it is important for us to understand? This last question King never quite answers. For the most part,King organizes Bloom chronologically. In order to forge its primary link between the history of science and the evolution of the novel, the book sets out a useful discussion of Linnaeus's work. It continues with readings of eighteenth- century English texts—novels like Maria Edgeworth's Belinda (1801) and poems by Charlotte Smith and Erasmus Darwin, whose Loves of the Plants (1789) is strategically chosen. Next come close readings of Jane Austen's novels in a chapter titled "Austen's Physicalized Mimeses," where King weds the picturesque garden to sexualized young heroines. When King turns to George Eliot and Henry James for much of the second half of Bloom, readers of Victorian Studies may find the book of most moment. The chapters on Eliot and James are also embedded with readings of novelists like Charles Dickens and Oscar Wilde. Finally, the book concludes with a brief, if appropriate, nod to James Joyce's Molly Bloom, who might usefully have been contrasted with Virginia Woolf's Lily Briscoe. Bloom's strengths and weaknesses might best be probed by address to the chapter "Eliot's Vernaculars: Natural Objects and Revisionary Blooms," primarily because here King extends "bloom narrativity" beyond the bounds of the traditional marriage plot to the subjects of "second blooms" (Middlemarch, 1871-72)and "clandestine bloom" (Adam Bede, 1859) (133). Eliot, King suggests, might even have found the currency of bloom cloying, an interesting idea in and of itself, though one not developed here. What this all amounts to in King's reading of Middlemarch is this: Lydgate mistakes bloom for love in Rosamund, while Casaubon looks for a blooming girl in Dorothea. Then...

The Theatrical Representation of Landscape in Rousseau’s La Nouvelle Héloïse

TIlE THEATRICAL REPRESENTATION OF LANDSCAPE IN ROUSSEAU'S LA NOUVELLE UELOisE \Villiam T. Uendel is a doctoral candidate illlhe Dcp(l/ f/lu.'IJ( o/Compara,jw! Litcralllrc. Ulliw!rsity ofCali/omia. Los Angeles. Numerous scholars. including John Barrell. D. G. Charlton. Wil Munsters. Christopher Thacker. 300 Dora Wiebenson. have discussed the affiliation of landscape and painting in eighteenth·century European aesthetics:' Landscape painting. they claim. provided the par:ldigm for a manner of viewing and appreciating the countryside. as represented in prose accounts and poetic descriptions. Briefly put. the countryside came 10 be seen in tenns of the relatively new aesthetic category. the picruresquc ---<:ounlJ)' scenes were praised to the degree that they were deemed either similar to p3intings or, at le3st. worthy of being painted. Likewise. in a common scholarly account, jusl as landscape painting provided a model for viewing the countryside. it also furnished a model for the development of the picturesque garden. as it appeared in Britain. and increasingly. from the around the middle of the eighteenth century. in France as well. What remains far too linlc examined, however. is the affiliation of landscape with theatre. as an alternative medium of visual representation. and as a complementary paradigm for conceptualizing how a viewer perceives the countryside and how a garden designer may achieve artistic effects that imitate those of uncultivated (or minimally cultivated) nature. Jean·Jacques Rousseau. frequently credited as a father of a Romantic attitude towards the relationship between nature and a human spectator. also. I will argue. deploys rhetoric that makes precisely this correlation between landscape and theatre. To test this hypothesis. I propose as case studies two passages from Rousseau's 1761 epistolary novel. Julie, 01/ fa 110l/velle Heloise. It is not. of course, that 1 deny clements of a painterly vision of landscape in these passages-indeed. quite the opposite-. but rather 1 assert the importance of recognizing the theatrical vision that infuses Rousseau's novelistic rhetoric. To direct this discussion. I would like to open with Ihe following three questions: First. how might we articulate the continuities in La NOl/velle Heloise between. on the one hand. the narrator Saint-Preux's epistolary descriptions of thc Alps. wherein nature is figured as presenting a theatrical performance. and. on the other hand. the illusion that he praises in Julic's landscape garden on her estate at Clarens? Secondly. how do both descriptions celebrate natural illusions. in which either nature produces artistic effects. or. inversely. human artifice does not call attention to itself and thereby appears as if a spontaneous outgrowth of untouched nature? Lastly. how do these passages deploy the rhetorical conceit that the spectator enters on stage to participate physically:md imaginatively in the theatrical performance? Before beginning with Rousseau's text. I will clarify what I mean to invoke by the term theatricaL by posing a contrast between the terms theatre and drama:' Drama. particularly in an eighteenth-century European context. principally implies a scripted text. written by a playwright and pronounced by actors. and in that way. it centers around articulate discourse. On the other hand. theatre implies the spatial features of performance-a stage where the action occurs, most often embellished with decor. and

Bloom: The Botanical Vernacular in the English Novel (review)

Reviewed by: Bloom: The Botanical Vernacular in the English Novel Barbara T. Gates (bio) Bloom: The Botanical Vernacular in the English Novel, by Amy M. King; pp. xxiii + 265. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2003, £31.00, $49.95. In Bloom: The Botanical Vernacular in the English Novel, Amy M. King sets out to show how the Linnaean system of botanical classification and its attendant language influenced English literature. King argues that Linnaeus's work led to a "botanical vernacular," a cultural language that extends well beyond scientific frontiers and into the world of novels. She reminds us that Linnaeus's system, dealing as it does with metaphors of sexual courtship and marriage, applied to plants a language used to discuss human beings and that in a post-Linnaean reversal, plant terms were more commonly applied to human sexual interactions. Primarily, King is concerned with the term "bloom" as it characterizes young women who have become sexually mature. As she explains it, "bloom" can refer both to innocent and provocative behaviors; in so doing, it can also help readers better understand key eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novels (which King calls "classical novels"), both their descriptions and their narratives. To this reviewer, King's argument seems both obvious and a stretch. After Linnaeus, botanical language was indeed used as code for human behaviors, most particularly in sexual primers where the analogy between plants and their parts and human sexual reproduction was carefully drawn. A botanical vernacular—and King's term is a good one—developed in part through increasing amateur interest in botany and filtered into many discourses. Tracing it into nonscientific avenues could offer a fascinating linguistic journey. But as King extends her metaphor to encompass one novel after another, in each case probing a "workable figure that could represent marital sexuality without transgressing the boundaries of decorum" (7), the reader's own bloom can [End Page 510] quickly fade. Does this botanical vernacular consist of only one word and its variants? Is it mainly another way of talking about the marriage plot or, along with gesture and action, of coding texts for readers in the know? And if so—and King does relate her subject to the marriage plot—how deep can her metaphoric readings take us? To a "bloom narrative," seems King's answer (4, and elsewhere), but how effective is she in showing us just what such a narrative is, or why it is important for us to understand? This last question King never quite answers. For the most part,King organizes Bloom chronologically. In order to forge its primary link between the history of science and the evolution of the novel, the book sets out a useful discussion of Linnaeus's work. It continues with readings of eighteenth- century English texts—novels like Maria Edgeworth's Belinda (1801) and poems by Charlotte Smith and Erasmus Darwin, whose Loves of the Plants (1789) is strategically chosen. Next come close readings of Jane Austen's novels in a chapter titled "Austen's Physicalized Mimeses," where King weds the picturesque garden to sexualized young heroines. When King turns to George Eliot and Henry James for much of the second half of Bloom, readers of Victorian Studies may find the book of most moment. The chapters on Eliot and James are also embedded with readings of novelists like Charles Dickens and Oscar Wilde. Finally, the book concludes with a brief, if appropriate, nod to James Joyce's Molly Bloom, who might usefully have been contrasted with Virginia Woolf's Lily Briscoe. Bloom's strengths and weaknesses might best be probed by address to the chapter "Eliot's Vernaculars: Natural Objects and Revisionary Blooms," primarily because here King extends "bloom narrativity" beyond the bounds of the traditional marriage plot to the subjects of "second blooms" (Middlemarch, 1871-72)and "clandestine bloom" (Adam Bede, 1859) (133). Eliot, King suggests, might even have found the currency of bloom cloying, an interesting idea in and of itself, though one not developed here. What this all amounts to in King's reading of Middlemarch is this: Lydgate mistakes bloom for love in Rosamund, while Casaubon looks for a blooming girl in Dorothea. Then...