Call for Papers | Classical Influences on Georgian Stourhead

Posted in Calls for Papers by Editor on January 14, 2015

Thanks to Hélène Bremer for passing along this CFP:

Classical Influences on Georgian Stourhead
Stourhead, Wiltshire, 11–12 November 2015

Proposals due by 31 March 2015

Pantheon at Stourhead, via Wikimedia Commons. Photo by Luke Gordon, 14 August 2007.

The gardens at Stourhead feature a number of elements influenced by the legacy of classical Rome. Henry Hoare, the owner of Stourhead from 1741 to 1783, travelled to Rome as part of his own Grand Tour and his chief architect, Henry Flitcroft, was part of Lord Burlington’s circle. On Day 1 of this event we will explore classical influences on the eighteenth-century English country garden. On Day 2 we will consider classical influences solely in the context of the garden and wider estate at Stourhead.

We invite papers on all aspects of classical influences on the eighteenth-century English garden and particularly the following topics:
• The influence of the Grand Tour on eighteenth-century English country gardens
• Visitor accounts of Stourhead and other eighteenth-century English country gardens
• Eighteenth-century English country garden designers
• The picturesque and the design and reception of the eighteenth-century English country garden
• Depiction of the eighteenth-century English country garden in the fine arts
• The country garden and publishing: newspapers, periodicals, guidebooks and journals
• Topographical poetry
• Theories of meaning in the eighteenth-century English country garden
• Relationships between houses, gardens and wider estates
• Lord Burlington and his circle
• The influence of classical Roman literature on the eighteenth-century English country garden
• Greek influences in eighteenth-century English country gardens

If you would like to present a paper, then please send a 300-word abstract to Dr. John Harrison at: jeh87@my.open.ac.uk by 31st March 2015.

Keynote Speakers
Roey Sweet, author of Cities and the Grand Tour: The British in Italy, 1690–1820 (University of Leicester); and Richard Wheeler, National Specialist in Garden History (National Trust)