Storied Ground

The study of landscape history falls uneasily between traditional disciplines. Once the preserve of the geographer alone, the field has abandoned solid terrain and turned, instead, to questions of representation. Landscape is now the province of English literature, art history and even musicology. Perhaps, however, cultural history is the ideal home for landscape studies. Paul Readman’s ambitious and eloquent study points, in its main title, Storied Ground, to the importance of narratives in the formation of meanings for land. It employs published prose as its main body of evidence. The book is concerned with discourse around landscape rather than physical formations or the lived experience of those upon the land. Although the text considers the contribution of William Gilpin and Uvedale Price, the aesthetics of landscape play only a subsidiary role. This is to be regretted, since a significant early precursor for this book can be found in Archibald Alison’s Essays on the Nature and Principles of Taste (1790). Laying down the foundations of Associationism, Alison provided a theoretical basis for highly valuing places associated with national, local or personal memories

Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Common ground · Identity (music · National identity · Political science · Sociology · Communication · Culinary Culture and Tourism · History · Law · Philippine History and Culture