TY - BOOK AU - Bushnell,Rebecca Weld TI - Green Desire: Imagining Early Modern English Gardens SN - 9781501722455 AV - SB318.34.G7B87 2003 U1 - 635/.0942/09031 PY - 2018///] CY - Ithaca, NY PB - Cornell University Press KW - English literature KW - Early modern, 1500-1700 KW - History and criticism KW - Gardening KW - England KW - History KW - 16th century KW - 17th century KW - Gardens in literature KW - Horticultural literature KW - Literary Studies KW - Medieval & Renaissance Studies KW - LITERARY CRITICISM / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh KW - bisacsh N1 - 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 N2 - 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 UR - https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501722455 UR - https://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9781501722455 UR - https://www.degruyter.com/document/cover/isbn/9781501722455/original ER -