ABSTRACT

The landscape concept in geography has recently been adopted by humanistic writers because of its holistic and subjective implications. The basic theory and technique of the landscape way of seeing was linear perspective, as important for the history of the graphic image as printing was for that of the written word. The evolution of landscape painting parallels that of geometry just as it does the changing social relations on the land in Tudor, Stuart and Georgian England. Recently, and primarily in North America, geographers have sought to reformulate landscape as a concept whose subjective and artistic resonances are to be actively embraced. J. B. Jackson refers to a widespread belief that the relationship between a social group and its landscape could be so expertly controlled as to make appropriate a comparison between environmental bonds and family bonds, thereby allowing landscape to become a means of moral commentary.