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Green Desire : Imagining Early Modern English Gardens / Rebecca Weld Bushnell.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press, [2018]Copyright date: ©2003Description: 1 online resource (208 p.) : 16 halftonesContent type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9781501722455
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 635/.0942/09031
LOC classification:
  • SB318.34.G7B87 2003
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources:
Contents:
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. Composing Gardens -- 2. The Printed Garden -- 3. Labor, Pleasure, and Art -- 4. The Ladies’ Part -- 5. Garden Society -- 6. Telling the Truth -- Conclusion -- Index
Summary: For Rebecca Bushnell, English gardening books tell a fascinating tale of the human love for plants and our will to make them do as we wish. These books powerfully evoke the desires of gardeners: they show us gardeners who, like poets, imagine not just what is but what should be. In particular, the earliest English garden books, such as Thomas Hill's The Gardeners Labyrinth or Hugh Platt's Floraes Paradise, mix magical practices with mundane recipes even when the authors insist that they rely completely on their own experience in these matters. Like early modern "books of secrets," early gardening manuals often promise the reader power to alter the essential properties of plants: to make the gillyflower double, to change the lily's hue, or to grow a cherry without a stone. Green Desire describes the innovative design of the old manuals, examining how writers and printers marketed them as fiction as well as practical advice for aspiring gardeners. Along with this attention to the delights of reading, it analyzes the strange dignity and pleasure of garden labor and the division of men's and women's roles in creating garden art. The book ends by recounting the heated debate over how much people could do to create marvels in their own gardens. For writers and readers alike, these green desires inspired dreams of power and self-improvement, fantasies of beauty achieved without work, and hopes for order in an unpredictable world—not so different from the dreams of gardeners today.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9781501722455

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. Composing Gardens -- 2. The Printed Garden -- 3. Labor, Pleasure, and Art -- 4. The Ladies’ Part -- 5. Garden Society -- 6. Telling the Truth -- Conclusion -- Index

restricted access online access with authorization star

http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

For Rebecca Bushnell, English gardening books tell a fascinating tale of the human love for plants and our will to make them do as we wish. These books powerfully evoke the desires of gardeners: they show us gardeners who, like poets, imagine not just what is but what should be. In particular, the earliest English garden books, such as Thomas Hill's The Gardeners Labyrinth or Hugh Platt's Floraes Paradise, mix magical practices with mundane recipes even when the authors insist that they rely completely on their own experience in these matters. Like early modern "books of secrets," early gardening manuals often promise the reader power to alter the essential properties of plants: to make the gillyflower double, to change the lily's hue, or to grow a cherry without a stone. Green Desire describes the innovative design of the old manuals, examining how writers and printers marketed them as fiction as well as practical advice for aspiring gardeners. Along with this attention to the delights of reading, it analyzes the strange dignity and pleasure of garden labor and the division of men's and women's roles in creating garden art. The book ends by recounting the heated debate over how much people could do to create marvels in their own gardens. For writers and readers alike, these green desires inspired dreams of power and self-improvement, fantasies of beauty achieved without work, and hopes for order in an unpredictable world—not so different from the dreams of gardeners today.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 26. Apr 2024)