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A will have three basic elements: trees, grass, and water. Often, the garden will be in a remote place and function as a landscape of the mind. It can also be used to highlight the differences between urban and rural life or be a place of refuge from the processes of time and mortality.
In some works, such gardens also have overtones of the regenerative powers of human sexuality marked out by flowers, springtime, and goddesses of love and fertility.
The literary use of this type of setting goes back, in Western literature at least, to Homer, and it became a staple of the pastoral works of poets such as Theocritus and Virgil. Horace ('' Ars Poetica'', 17) and the commentators on Virgil, such as Servius, recognize that descriptions of ''loci amoeni'' have become a rhetorical commonplace. Arcadia, a rugged region of Greece, was frequently depicted as a whose inhabitants lived in harmony with nature; in time, this usage evolved to describe a broader utopian vision based around simple, pastoral living.
In Ovid's '' Metamorphoses'', the function of the is inverted, to form the "locus terribilis". Instead of offering a respite from dangers, it is itself usually the scene of violent encounters.
The was a popular theme in the works of such
Locus amoenus: Gardens and Horticulture in the Renaissance
Fantasy tropes Medieval literature Literary motifs Utopian fiction
Latin
Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
for "pleasant place") is a literary topos involving an idealized place of safety or comfort. A is usually a beautiful, shady lawn or open woodland, or a group of idyllic islands, sometimes with connotations of Eden or Elysium
Elysium (), otherwise known as the Elysian Fields (, ''Ēlýsion pedíon''), Elysian Plains or Elysian Realm, is a conception of the afterlife that developed over time and was maintained by some Greek religious and philosophical sects and cult ...
.
Ernst Robert Curtius wrote the concept's definitive formulation in his ''European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages'' (1953).
Characteristics
A will have three basic elements: trees, grass, and water. Often, the garden will be in a remote place and function as a landscape of the mind. It can also be used to highlight the differences between urban and rural life or be a place of refuge from the processes of time and mortality.
In some works, such gardens also have overtones of the regenerative powers of human sexuality marked out by flowers, springtime, and goddesses of love and fertility.
History
Classical
The literary use of this type of setting goes back, in Western literature at least, to Homer, and it became a staple of the pastoral works of poets such as Theocritus and Virgil. Horace ('' Ars Poetica'', 17) and the commentators on Virgil, such as Servius, recognize that descriptions of ''loci amoeni'' have become a rhetorical commonplace. Arcadia, a rugged region of Greece, was frequently depicted as a whose inhabitants lived in harmony with nature; in time, this usage evolved to describe a broader utopian vision based around simple, pastoral living.
In Ovid's '' Metamorphoses'', the function of the is inverted, to form the "locus terribilis". Instead of offering a respite from dangers, it is itself usually the scene of violent encounters.
Medieval
TheMiddle Ages
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and ...
merged the classical with biblical imagery, as from the Song of Songs.
Matthew of Vendôme provided multiple accounts of how to describe the , while Dante
Dante Alighieri (; most likely baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri; – September 14, 1321), widely known mononymously as Dante, was an Italian Italian poetry, poet, writer, and philosopher. His ''Divine Comedy'', originally called ...
drew on the commonplace for his description of the Earthly Paradise: "Here spring is endless, here all fruits are."
Renaissance
The was a popular theme in the works of such Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) is a Periodization, period of history and a European cultural movement covering the 15th and 16th centuries. It marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and was characterized by an effort to revive and sur ...
figures as Ariosto and Tasso.
Shakespeare made good use of the in his long poem '' Venus and Adonis''. The trope also fed into his construction, in many plays, of what Northrop Frye has called the Shakespearean "green world" – a space that lies outside of city limits, a liminal space where erotic passions can be freely explored, away from civilization and the social order – such as the Forest of Arden in '' As You Like It''. A mysterious and dark, feminine place, as opposed to the rigid masculine civil structure, the green world can also be found featured in '' A Midsummer Night's Dream'' and '' Titus Andronicus''.
Modern
In the 20th century the appears in the work of T. S. Eliot, as in the Rose Garden of '' Burnt Norton'' and in J. R. R. Tolkien'sShire
Shire () is a traditional term for an administrative division of land in Great Britain and some other English-speaking countries. It is generally synonymous with county (such as Cheshire and Worcestershire). British counties are among the oldes ...
and Lothlórien.
Sinister doubles
The split-off obverse of the is the apparently delectable but in fact treacherous garden, often linked to a malign sexuality, as in Circe's palace or the Bower of Bliss in Edmund Spenser's '' Faerie Queene''.Northrop Frye, ''Anatomy of Criticism'' (1971) p. 149See also
References
{{Reflist, 2}External links
Locus amoenus: Gardens and Horticulture in the Renaissance
Fantasy tropes Medieval literature Literary motifs Utopian fiction