cca3101journal3landscapeaesthetics

CCA3101.
Environmental Humanities. Semester 2, 2008. Dr Rod Giblett. ECU Mt.
Lawley.

4

Post
Modern Wetlands

Dr
Rod Giblett week 5

Landscape
Aesthetics

Paradigm

Landscape
aesthetics affect every facet of our lives and have a profound effect
upon us all yet these are artificial constructs which man has
created. Man is remote in his dealings with nature and views
landscape as an artificial constructs not a reality relationship.
(p. 47).

It is intriguing to study
a western world of nature repressed and sublimated, with all natural
beauty incorporated into the world of aesthetics. Drawing from
Woodring, Dr Giblett says ‘Nature was made into art; cultural
transformation of nature into art [in the western world] occurred in
early nineteenth-century Europe’. This process commenced some
centuries earlier and Dr Giblett (p. 49) comments on Willey when
saying nature has been an object for aesthetic practice and
experience in landscape painting, gardening and writing since the 16C
(in UK?) Itlay? R

In today’s western
world, (including the ‘conservation counter aesthetic’),
man still clings unthinkingly to the ‘environmental aesthetic’,
still using the ‘sublime, the picturesque and the beautiful’.
(pp. 47 & 48). Dr Giblett further elaborates, saying these
assumptions, this ‘heirarchical privileging’ which has
caused nature to ‘split’ are carried through on all
levels, spatially, corporeally and metaphysically. Dank lowlands
such as swamps and marshes and other dark, shadowy places, are
repressed. Through this process these aspects of nature became
demonized. In stark contrast, such elevated regions as the high and
mountainous and those enjoying open, sunny aspect became sublimated,
to form the sublime. (p. 48).

Venice

These
changes (it seems to me) relied upon the development and expansion of
the earliest city states made possible by new political stability and
associated prosperity. such as Venice and Florence in Italy. As the
intial development of this process occurred, the concept was adopted
in other centres of power and prosperity and in foreign regions such
as England. This process over several hundred years, went hand in
hand with key

Improvements
in the life of western mankind, such as improved food supplies and
the rise of the individual life. The accompanying growth in world
population led to major percentage of the population inhabiting towns
and cities, for the first time. This of course led to the expansion
in the size of the cities, continuing to the day.

Cities,
and the urban life and the demands it places on the countryside, is
profoundly implicated in the changes to the way western man has made
in how he views nature, and landscape

The
incorporation of aesthetics and the transference of nature and
landscape to the artificial world of art, seems to have come about as
a direct result of the way the increase in the numbers of humans and
the development of the cities, which is the unnatural environment
most of us inhabit.

p.50
capitalism

class
struggle

Back
cover

‘western’
theology –

Aesthetics
& philosophy

Cities
& human psychology

Mythology,
narrative & medical

Military,
social and conservation history

British

Australian

American

Post
structuralist

Post-colonial

French
feminist theory

All
packaged up in environmental issues

“Project
of Modernity” - New conservation ethic – reconfigurations

Front
page

Aesthetic
and political

Cultural
and social

Material
and popular

Preface

Check
page xi – “gylany”? definition

Also
matrifocal

Also
patricarchial heirachy

Introduction
p. 3

“I
saw” – viewed (all)

“death,
disease the monstrous and the melancholic ‘choler’

And
downright mad

Between
land and water – ‘transition’ zone

p.
3. “quaking zone”, ‘halfway world’

p.
4 they have a ‘changing nature’

p.5
“high heathy (healthy) ground” (Collins)

Swamp
– oppressive – atmosphere whether cold or hot

1. 
   Rennaisance –
   perspective

   
   

2. 
   18c

   
   

3. 
   Today’s pictures

   
   

4. 
   Aveda picture

   
   

Aboriginals
had many superstitions of swamps – (my thoughts)

Terror
but mischief , games with creatures

p.
9 ‘picturesque’ wetland

vip
– ie constable – straightened river views

link
to picture

p.
9 ‘mired’ is a most graphic term – image/metaphor

as
versus ‘tarred’ McCarthy cartoon (where he is tarred)

p.
10 they are often low-lying so difficult to be pinnacle –
‘sublime’

p.
9 think about ‘Lord of the Rings’ Gollum

Angelina
Jolie/Boewulf/ beauty/danger

No
disagree – not only constable

Although
glinting, shining reflective

p.12
“wide horizon of possibilities” constitute- (take in
swamp picture)

p.
13 fascinatinly uncanny/manancing

Barrell,
J. (1972). The idea of landscape and the sense of place 1730 –
1840: An approach to the poetry of John Clare. (pp. 1 -12).
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Giblett,
R. (2004). Living with the earth: Mastery to mutuality.( Chapters 3
and 4). Cambridge: Salt. Chapters

Giblett,
R. (1996). Postmodern wetlands: Culture, history, ecology. Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press

Wilson,
A. (1992). The culture of nature: North American landscape from
Disney to the Exxon Valdez.( Introduction and chapters 1 and 3).
Cambridge, Mass: Blackwell.

Susanne Harford. Student Number 10043898. 1
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