The Politics of the Picturesque
Literature, Landscape and Aesthetics since 1770

Essays on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century ways of looking at landscape, in theory and practice.

Stephen Copley (Edited by), Peter Garside (Edited by)

9780521131100, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 11 February 2010

320 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.8 cm, 0.47 kg

Review of the hardback: 'An often stimulating collection, whose diversity seems entirely appropriate to the category it addresses.' Ecumene

The picturesque (a set of theories, ideas, and conventions that grew up around the question of how we look at landscape) offers a valuable focus for new investigations into the literary, artistic, social, and cultural history of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This volume of essays by scholars from various disciplines in Britain and America incorporates a range of historically and theoretically challenging approaches to the topic. It covers the writers most closely identified with the exposition of the picturesque as a theory, and also traces the influence and implications of its aesthetic in a variety of fields in the Romantic period, including literary and pictorial works, estate management, and women's fashion. Several essays deal more specifically with radical critiques and appropriations of the picturesque in the nineteenth century, while in others its influence is traced beyond traditionally accepted geographical or historical bounds.

List of illustrations
List of tables
Notes on contributors
Introduction Stephen Copley and Peter Garside
1. Picturesque landscaping and estate management: Uvedale Price and Nathaniel Kent at Foxley Stephen Daniels and Charles Watkins
2. William Gilpin and the black lead mine Stephen Copley
3. The ruined abbey: Picturesque and Gothic values Michael Charlesworth
4. The Picturesque and ready-to-wear femininity Ann Bermingham
5. 'The coquetry of nature': politics and the picturesque in women's fiction Vivien Jones
6. Picturesque figure and landscape: Meg Merrilies and the gypsies Peter Garside
7. Romantic explorers and picturesque travellers John Whale
8. The legacy of the Picturesque: landscape, property and the ruin Raimonda Modiano
9. The Picturesque and the sublime: two worldscapes David Punter
10. Agrarians against the Picturesque: ultra-radicalism and the revolutionary politics of land David Worrall
11. The Chartist Picturesque Anne Janowitz
12. The metropolitan Picturesque Malcolm Andrews
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB]