Arcadian Visions

Pastoral Influences on Poetry, Painting and the Design of Landscape

Allan R. Ruff

• Publisher: Windgather Press
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN:
  9781909686670
• Topic: Ciencias biológicas
• Subtopic: Horticultura

This book is about Arcadia and the pastoral tradition; what it has meant for successive generations and their vision of the landscape, as well as the implications this has had for its design and management. Today the concept of Arcadia, and way it has shaped our landscape, is dimly perceived and little understood by landscape architects and those responsible for the management of land. This is in marked contrast to previous centuries when the vision of Arcadia and the pastoral was implanted by education among the more privileged in society. Young men spent many hours translating and learning by rote the words of Virgil and other classical authors and on the Grand Tour they would be introduced to work of painters like Poussin and Claude and their interpretations of the Ideal pastoral landscape. Today Arcadia holds as powerful an influence as at any time in the past and it is important that we plan our urban environment in ways that harmonize with the natural world.Arcadian Visions provides an alternative landscape history for all those involved with the landscape - either through its design, management, use or enjoyment. It begins by examining the origins of Arcadia and the pastoral in the classical poetry of Theocritus and Virgil, and the effects of, and on, Christianity before outlining its development in renaissance Italy and subsequently in the Netherlands, America and England. It concludes by looking at how Arcadian ecology is bringing about a reappraisal of the pastoral in the 21st century.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations, Sources and Credits
• Preface
• Chapter 1: The Classical Origins of Arcadia
• Chapter 2: Virgil: the house, garden and landscape
• Chapter 3: The Christian World and Arcadia
• Chapter 4: Venice and the Pastoral Landscape
• Chapter 5: Rome and the Pastoral Landscape
• Chapter 6: The Dutch Republic and the Golden Age of Landscape
• Chapter 7: Changes to the Pastoral Vision in Eighteenth-Century England
• Chapter 8: Arcadia and the Pastoral Landscape Realised
• Chapter 9: The Happy Rural Life
• Chapter 10: The Coming of the Picturesque and the Romantics
• Chapter 11: The Pastoral Vision and the American Dream
• Chapter 12: America and Religious Pastoral
• Chapter 13: Ruskin, Morris and the Garden City
• Chapter 14: Pastoral Visions of England and the First World War
• Chapter 15: Modernism and Anti-Pastoral Landscape
• Chapter 16: The Workers’Pastoral
• Chapter 17: Arcadia Revisited: the ecological landscape
• Chapter 18: Eco-Pastoral: the pastoral redefined
• Chapter 19: Final Thoughts
• Timeline
• Bibliography