Grammars of Approach: Landscape, Narrative, and the Linguistic Picturesque

Description

In Grammars of Approach, Cynthia Wall offers a close look at changes in perspective in spatial design, language, and narrative across the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that involve, literally and psychologically, the concept of “approach.” In architecture, the term “approach” changed in that period from a verb to a noun, coming to denote the drive from the lodge at the entrance of an estate “through the most interesting part of the grounds,” as landscape designer Humphrey Repton put it. The shift from the long straight avenue to the winding approach, Wall shows, swung the perceptual balance away from the great house onto the personal experience of the visitor. At the same time, the grammatical and typographical landscape was shifting in tandem, away from objects and Things (and capitalized common Nouns) to the spaces in between, like punctuation and the “lesser parts of speech”. The implications for narrative included new patterns of syntactical architecture and the phenomenon of free indirect discourse. Wall examines the work of landscape theorists such as Repton, John Claudius Loudon, and Thomas Whately alongside travel narratives, topographical views, printers’ manuals, dictionaries, encyclopedias, grammars, and the novels of Defoe, Richardson, Burney, Radcliffe, and Austen to reveal a new landscaping across disciplines—new grammars of approach in ways of perceiving and representing the world in both word and image. Contents......Page 6 List Of Illustrations......Page 8 A Note On My Text......Page 10 Acknowledgments......Page 12 Introduction......Page 16 1. The Architectural Approach......Page 26 The Etymology Of “Approach” (N. S.)......Page 28 The Concept Of Approach (N. S. And V.): The “Ancient” And The “Modern” Lines......Page 32 The Language Of Approach (V.): Architectural And Syntactical Design......Page 42 The Traveler’S Approach......Page 50 The Novelist’S Approach......Page 54 2. The Prepositional Building......Page 64 The Park Gate Lodge......Page 66 The Topographical View: Angles And Staffage......Page 77 A Bridge To The Next Part: “A Village On, Or Across, The Thames”......Page 97 3. The Topographical Page......Page 106 The Typographical Landscape......Page 108 The Letters On The Page......Page 111 I. Fonts......Page 114 II. Capitals And Italics......Page 119 III. Catchwords......Page 125 IV. Pointing......Page 133 4. The Grammar In Between......Page 152 The Rise Of Grammar......Page 154 The Rise Of The Preposition......Page 159 I. Richardson As Printer......Page 170 II. Clarissa And Prepositions......Page 174 III. Clarissa As Preposition......Page 180 5. The Narrative Picturesque......Page 186 Syntactical Architecture In Textual Landscapes......Page 188 I. Bunyan: “Thinges...Included In One Word”......Page 189 Ii. Defoe: “In A Word”......Page 196 Iii. Haywood: “In Fine, She Was Undone”......Page 200 The Narrative Picturesque......Page 207 I. Radcliffe And The Prepositional Phrase......Page 209 Ii. Burney And The Psychological Interior......Page 225 Iii. Austen And The Approach To The Interior......Page 235 Coda: A Topographical Page......Page 246 Notes......Page 250 Bibliography......Page 300 Index......Page 336