England's paradise: Horticultural landscapes in the Renaissance.

摘要

This dissertation takes as its subject the symbiotic relationship between physical gardens and their literary representations in the Renaissance. Although the meanings and uses of the garden shifted throughout Europe in the Renaissance, this project is primarily concerned with how gardens in England developed in the period between the 1560s and the 1670s, roughly from the beginning of Elizabeth I's reign to the beginning of Charles II's restoration. During this period, garden design changed radically from spaces sacred to secular, and from the intimate medieval loci amoeni (delightful places) to expansive estate gardens, consisting of highly manicured, theatrical formal areas and more natural (though indeed planned and often planted) parks. The conversion of monasteries to aristocratic homes in the sixteenth century transformed garden style from a medieval conceptualization of enclosed private space into a locus of cultural and artistic display. The upheaval of the Civil War in the seventeenth century inspired a new horticultural style that shunned aristocratic formalism and celebrated a return to the natural. After the restoration, landscape reform was espoused by both royalists and republicans alike, who sought, despite their political differences, to address issues of poverty, shortages of renewable resources, and land use by rethinking horticultural aesthetics and practices.;In England, actual gardens and their literary counterparts represented and constructed concepts of monarchal power, gender relationships and hierarchies, national identity, and political principles. This era marked the beginning of intense horticultural study, the development of the botanical garden, and the use of these scientific gardens as a means of understanding the expanding world. I argue that both the literature containing gardens and the gardens themselves work together to form a new national identity in England and that gardens (on the page, on the stage, and in the soil) are integral to England's growing perception of itself as a European and colonial power.