Architecture, travellers and writers : constructing histories of perception 1640-1950 / Anne Hultzsch.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hultzsch, Anne, author.

Series:

Studies in comparative literature (Oxford, England) ; 26.

Studies in comparative literature ; 26

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Architecture--History.

Architecture.

History.

Architecture and literature.

Travel writing.

Physical Description:

xii, 226 pages : illustrations ; 26 cm.

Place of Publication:

London : LEGENDA, Modern Humanities Research Association and Maney Publishing, 2014.

Summary:

Does the way in which buildings are looked at, and made sense of, change over the course of time? How can we find out about this? By looking at a selection of travel writings spanning four centuries, Anne Hultzsch suggests that it is language, the description of architecture, which offers answers to such questions. The words authors use to transcribe what they see for the reader to re-imagine offer glimpses at modes of perception specific to one moment, place and person. Hultzsch constructs an intriguing patchwork of local and often fragmentary narratives discussing texts as diverse as the 17th-century diary of John Evelyn, Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719) and an 1855 art guide by Swiss art historian Jacob Burckhardt. Further authors considered include 17th-century collector John Bargrave, 18th-century novelist Tobias Smollett, poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, critic John Ruskin as well as the 20th-century architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Rendering Buildings into Words: Pevsner and Evelyn 13

Writing The Buildings of England 14

Recording in the Diary 29

2 Ordering the Unfamiliar: Bargrave and the Early Grand Tour 54

Curious Words, Things, and Images 55

Ordering the Cabinet of Travel 65

Describing Unfamiliar Places 71

3 Reading Books: Defoe, Smollett, and the Country-House Guidebook 87

Robinson Crusoe's Lists 88

Domestic Circuits 95

Smollett's Letters 107

4 Thinking in Metaphor: Evelyn and Ruskin 129

Understanding through Metaphor 130

Metaphors of Perception 142

Attribute and Object 146

5 Looking through the Tens: Evelyn, Goethe, and Burckhardt 153

Evelyn and the Microscope 154

Goethe and the Textbook 163

Burckhardt and the Photograph 177.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781907975639

1907975632

OCLC:

879261810