After the Garden?

Since the 18th century, the idea of landscape has given context to the garden. Both the garden and landscape have proved fertile resources for a range of reflections. This text considers setting and place as features of both the human condition and sociocultural existence.

Since the 18th century, the idea of landscape has given context to the garden. Both the garden and landscape have proved fertile resources for a wide range of philosophical and cultural reflections. Examining literal and intellectual scapes, the contributors to "After the Garden?" consider setting and place as irreducible features of both the human condition and sociocultural existence. Focusing on a range of periods in places from France to the Balkans and from Siberia to San Diego, essays centre on such subjects as the "global garden", Lockean landscapes, ecohistory, 19th-century Australian and North American landscape paintings, and zoos. Helping to ground the collection in its project of illuminating both the earthly reality and the metaphorical richness of landscape are two photoessays that focus on "unsettled" sites of the Far East and the American West.