Mr. Stilgoe does not ask that we take his book outdoors with us; he believes that reading and experiencing landscapes are activities that should be kept separate. But; as I learned in his book; the hollow storage area in a car drivers door was once a holster; the secure nesting place of a pistol. I recommend you stow your copy there. -- The Wall Street JournalLandscape; John Stilgoe tells us; is a noun. From the old Frisian language (once spoken in coastal parts of the Netherlands and Germany); it meant shoveled land: landschop. Sixteenth-century Englishmen misheard or mispronounced this as landskep; which became landskip; then landscape; designating the surface of the earth shaped for human habitation. In What Is Landscape? Stilgoe maps the discovery of landscape by putting words to things; zeroing in on landscapes essence but also leading sideways expeditions through such sources as childrens picture books; folklore; deeds; antique terminology; out-of-print dictionaries; and conversations with locals. ("What is that?" "Well; its not really a slough; not really; its a bayou...") He offers a highly original; cogent; compact; gracefully written narrative lexicon of landscape as word; concept; and path to discoveries. What Is Landscape? is an invitation to walk; to notice; to ask: to see a sandcastle with a pinwheel at the beach and think of Dutch windmills -- icons of triumph; markers of territory won from the sea; to walk in the woods and be amused by the Elizabethans misuse of the Latin silvaticus (people of the woods) to coin the word savages; to see in a suburban front lawn a representation of the meadow of a medieval freehold. Discovering landscape is good exercise for body and for mind. This book is an essential guide and companion to that exercise -- to understanding; literally and figuratively; what landscape is.
#3415314 in eBooks 2014-06-18 2014-06-18File Name: B019OUQM1M
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