In this fresh and authoritative account John Macarthur presents the eighteenth century idea of the picturesque when it was a risky term concerned with a refined taste for everyday things, such as the hovels of the labouring poor in the light of its reception and effects in modern culture. In a series of linked essays Macarthur shows:
what the concept of picture does in the picturesque and how this relates to modern theories of the image
how the distaste that might be felt today at the sentimentality of the picturesque was already at play in the eighteenth century
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In this fresh and authoritative account John Macarthur presents the eighteenth century idea of the picturesque when it was a risky term concerned w...
