The Genius of Landscape : landscape Ideology in the Literature of the 1800s
The first romanticism at the turn of the 19th century would be the successor to Rousseauism. However, we believe this translates into a radical break between the idea of nature as understood in the 18th century and the idea of landscape as expressed by the young writers in the 1800s. Until the Revolution, the idea of nature is still considered as the ideal setting for potential happiness, as evidenced, even on the ground, by landscape designers at the end of the former Regime. From the regular garden to the landscaped garden, landscape was only ever designed as a background. In the wake of the Revolution, landscape takes on a whole new meaning. It is no longer the divine setting where the intelligent man flourishes, but becomes the sublime figure of a new relationship that the man has with himself. Representations of the Enlightenment culture were based on transcendence and verticality; these give way to representations of romantic thought, built on immanence and horizontality.Thus elevated to the status of concept, the landscape gives rise to a new relationship with time and space, redefines the view point and the horizon and prioritises the relationship on the essence. We believe that this transformation of representations, which heralds the entry into the modern era, is the most profound effect of the upheaval caused by the Revolution. Our thesis claims that it is important to talk about the emergence of a landscape ideology for these 1800s if we are to understand what leads not only to the literature of Senancour, Germaine de Staël and Chateaubriand, but also the philosophy of Destutt de Tracy and Maine de Biran as well as the growth in the physical sciences, with Georges Cuvier, and the human sciences, with Jean-Baptiste Say, to quote our principal authors.