Landscape and Authority in the Early Modern World

Landscape and Authority in the Early Modern World explores how landscape shaped and was shaped by imperial identity and the mediation of relationships between the court and its audiences in the early modern world. Nine studies focused on East and South Asia, the Islamic world, and Europe show how early modern courts and societies shaped and were shaped by the landscape, including physical sites and conceptual ones.

Format: Hardback
Length: 360 pages
Publication date: 25 April 2023
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Courts and societies across the early modern Eurasian world underwent profound transformations driven by physical, technological, and conceptual developments of their era. Evolving forms of communication, greatly expanded mobility, the spread of scientific knowledge, and the emergence of an increasingly integrated global economy all shaped how states articulated and projected visions of authority into societies, which in turn perceived and responded to these visions in contrasting terms. The landscape, both as a physical entity and a vehicle for imagination and consumption, played a central role in these transformations. The relationship between the land and its imagination became a fertile ground for negotiating imperial identities within and beyond the court's precincts.

In Landscape and Authority in the Early Modern World, contributors delve into the role of landscape in the articulation and expression of imperial identity and the mediation of relationships between the court and its diverse audiences in the early modern world. Nine studies, focused on geographical areas such as East and South Asia, the Islamic world, and Europe, explore how early modern courts and societies shaped and were shaped by the landscape, encompassing both physical sites like gardens, palaces, cities, and hunting parks and conceptual ones such as frontiers, idealized polities, and the cosmos. The collected essays broaden the meaning and potential of landscape as a communicative medium in this period by engaging in dialogue with a wide range of forms and subjects, including unique expressions such as gardens, paintings, and manuscripts, as well as the products of rapidly developing commercial technologies of reproduction, particularly print. The volume invites a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the complex interplay between landscape, authority, and cultural expression in the early modern world.

Weight: 952g
Dimension: 261 x 186 x 28 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781512823585