Poetry, Space, Landscape
Toward a New Theory

Social and historical theory of the conceptualisation of space from ancient times to the Renaissance.

Chris Fitter (Author)

9780521673495, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 30 June 2005

356 pages, 18 b/w illus.
21.6 x 14 x 2.3 cm, 0.489 kg

'Anyone looking for a link between perception, experience and literary expression will be pleased with the rich discussions s/he will find here, particularly of premodern cultures. One of the virtues of this book is its permanent theoretical awareness: if theories determine what we perceive, then Fitter has indeed helped us to a new perception of 'our' nature.' Wolfgang Riedel, Journal for the Study of British Cultures

Why was the art of landscape painting invented in the fifth century BC, abandoned with the collapse of Rome, and revived again in the High Middle Ages? Did the Greeks, or the ancient Christians perceive the natural world differently from the way we do now? In Poetry, Space, Landscape, Chris Fitter traces the history of nature-sensibility from the ancient world to the English Renaissance, setting poems and paintings in the widely differing cultural contexts that created them. He suggests a new social and historical theory of the conceptualisation of space, explaining the rise and fall of the idea of 'landscape'. And he argues that enduring basic categories of perception create different readings of natural reality determined by our social and material relations with nature.

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
1. Toward a theory of 'landscape' and landscape perception
2. The values of landscape: an historical outline in the ancient world
3. Landscape and the Bible
4. Late antiquity and the Church Fathers
5. Medieval into Renaissance
6. Seventeenth-century English poetry
Select bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary theory [DSA]