The Influence of Chinese Gardens in Early
Ann Talbot
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Abstract
Neither art, nor philosophy, nor politics, gardens have been relegated to the status of a specialised, even minor, subject somewhat apart from the key themes of mainstream historical analysis. This chapter aims to correct that bias and demonstrate that the study of gardens can offer insights into all these areas and even suggest an alternative perspective that challenges the accepted understanding of the Early Modern period. It will question the widely held view that English taste became more sinophobic in the course of the eighteenth century as radical democratic sensibilities emerged. Rather than seeing the English response to Chinese gardens as an alien idea, superficially understood and badly executed, it will be suggested that it is more productive to understand the process as a series of related and interlinked responses to the expansion and greater integration of the global market in both England and China.
Figures (18)
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Square-bracketed references at the end of an entry indicates the source of the reference. I have been attempting, ultimately, to cover all sources in English. A major present specific lack is anything that treats sources of design ideas in the private or scholar gardens deriving from family cemeteries. (The lead is provided in, for example, Clunas 1996. 1) Further, explicit treatment of the differences between temple gardens and other types of Chinese gardens is rare-particularly from the point of view of the act of designing. I know only of what is implied in Miller (2004). And, something in English on the relationship between the operas of Suzhou and the gardens they were written for would be good. Finally, there is much of a general nature on feng shui but little that is scholarly that directly deals with the details of its use in garden design. 2 Surely it cannot simply be the result of Ji Cheng's opinion of feng shui practitioners in Yuan Ye? For me, that reads as professional rivalry.
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY ON CLASSICAL CHINESE GARDENS
2018
This document is always being updated. Version: 2018 September 09 Compared with the 2016 (previous) edition, there are 92 new items [A1, B11, C8, F9, G1, H3, J6, K4, L8, M5, N1, P9, R2, S7, T6, W3, X1, Y2, Z5]. Additionally, various tyos, oddities of sequence, etc. have been adjusted. The reader should keep in mind my biases. I teach architectural design and design approaches and methods. I am interested in how the gardens were used and understood, but I am interested particularly in how the gardens were designed – not only analytically but, especially, how the designing was carried out, the sequences of design decisions. I am less interested in their history. And, I am an architect and have published the view that the classical Chinese scholar garden was the most sophisticated architectural genre ever invented. Relatively speaking, I am not a landscape architect, a gardener, a historian or a scholar of things Chinese.
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