The Place of Landscape: Concepts, Contexts, Studies
Jeff Malpas
Abstract
This volume explores the conceptual “topography” of landscape: it examines the character of landscape as itself a mode of place as well as the modes of place that appear in relation to landscape. Chapters explore the concept of landscape, including its supposed relation to the spectatorial, its character as time-space, its relation to indigenous notions of “country,” and its liminality. They examine landscape as it appears within a variety of contexts, from geography through photography and garden history to theology; and more specific studies look at the forms of landscape in medieval landsca ... More
This volume explores the conceptual “topography” of landscape: it examines the character of landscape as itself a mode of place as well as the modes of place that appear in relation to landscape. Chapters explore the concept of landscape, including its supposed relation to the spectatorial, its character as time-space, its relation to indigenous notions of “country,” and its liminality. They examine landscape as it appears within a variety of contexts, from geography through photography and garden history to theology; and more specific studies look at the forms of landscape in medieval landscape painting, film and television, and in relation to national identity. The chapters demonstrate that the study of landscape cannot be restricted to any one genre, cannot be taken as the exclusive province of any one discipline, and cannot be exhausted by any single form of analysis. What the place of landscape now evokes is itself a wide-ranging terrain encompassing issues concerning the nature of place, of humans being in place, and of the structures that shape such being which are, in turn, shaped by it.
Keywords:
landscape,
place,
topography,
time-space,
country,
photography,
garden history,
medieval landscape painting,
national identity,
television
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2011 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780262015523 |
| Published to MIT Press Scholarship Online: August 2013 |
DOI:10.7551/mitpress/9780262015523.001.0001 |
