On Other Grounds
Landscape Gardening and Nationalism in Eighteenth-Century England and France
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Examines eighteenth-century French and English landscape gardens as representations of nationalist expression.
Description
On Other Grounds addresses the broader impacts of the English landscape movement on French gardening during the latter half of the eighteenth century. Through readings of the relevant texts of major authors of the period—including Voltaire, Newton, Rousseau, Condillac, Descartes, Diderot, Walpole, and Locke—the author demonstrates the links between landscape gardening, the formation of national identity, and nationalism in England and France. Themes that are central to Enlightenment studies are explored, including theories of nature, the picturesque, sensibility, the rise of nationalism, and colonialism.
Brigitte Weltman-Aron is Assistant Professor of French at The University of Memphis.
Reviews
"Eighteenth-century scholars have long recognized the importance of gardens in the development of the century's sensibility. Weltman-Aron's contribution to this important issue is considerable. Many of the primary texts she examines have not been treated in such detail, and the parallels she draws between philosophical, political, and aesthetic texts of the period are highly original and instructive. This is a valuable and highly thoughtful work of careful and informed scholarship that makes key contributions to our understanding of eighteenth-century thought and culture." — Ronald Bogue, University of Georgia
"Stylish, rigorous, and witty. If only there were more adventurous studies of this kind, and so well written—a significant intervention in the consideration of nationalism as well as an equally significant departure from conventional approaches to the subject." — Julian Wolfreys, author of Being English: Narratives, Idioms, and Performances of National Identity from Coleridge to Trollope