Landscapes of the Mind: Worlds of Sense and Metaphor"A landscape is a visual perception, the way in which we experience our environment through our eyes. In this provocative book Douglas Porteous ventures far beyond the visual into the myriad other sensory and existential perceptions--otherscapes--through which we encounter the worlds around and within us. Part I, Sensuous worlds, investigates and celebrates the problems and joys of Smellscape and Soundscape. These interpretations accumulate in the pivotal essay on Bodyscape. Part II, Landscapes of Metaphor, delves more deeply into the existential landscape antinomies of human life: body (Bodyscape) vs. mind (Inscape); home (Homescape) vs travel (Escape); and, mirroring the sequence of urbanization, rural childhood (Childscape) vs urban adulthood (Deathscape). Rarely considered as an interconnected sequence, these 'scape studies serve to illuminate, interpret, and critique the human condition in what we are pleased to call Western 'civilization.' Porteous draws from a remarkably wide array of sources--the modern novel (particularly the works of Graham Greene and Malcolm Lowry), poetry, travel literature, geography, psychology, urban design, and environmental aesthetics--and adds specially commissioned line-drawings by Ole Heggen. The result is an extraordinary work, interdisciplinary in scope, non-technical in language, written with authority and passion."--book jacket. |
From inside the book
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Page 123
... escape is not to religion but to alcohol . Physical escape from England is effected by a life of wandering . Lowry has a recurrent feeling of failure , or fear of failure . Both authors were conditioned by Conrad and Baudelaire ; both ...
... escape is not to religion but to alcohol . Physical escape from England is effected by a life of wandering . Lowry has a recurrent feeling of failure , or fear of failure . Both authors were conditioned by Conrad and Baudelaire ; both ...
Page 133
... Escape , tells of his own recurrent crossing and recrossing of borders , of escapes and deportations . Greeneland , indeed , is a frontier zone of the mind , whose inhabitants , of divided loyalty and deep inner conflicts , cross and ...
... Escape , tells of his own recurrent crossing and recrossing of borders , of escapes and deportations . Greeneland , indeed , is a frontier zone of the mind , whose inhabitants , of divided loyalty and deep inner conflicts , cross and ...
Page 137
... escape from the wasteland of Metroland is merely an escape to a tropical counterpart , a wasteland region of seediness , decay , and above all , exiles . The scene is readily set . If we seek the city in exotic Greeneland , it is to ...
... escape from the wasteland of Metroland is merely an escape to a tropical counterpart , a wasteland region of seediness , decay , and above all , exiles . The scene is readily set . If we seek the city in exotic Greeneland , it is to ...
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Common terms and phrases
adult animal autobiography barranca beautiful become body Brighton Rock British Columbia cent century chapter characters child childhood children's literature childscape civilization concept Consul contrast Cuernavaca dark deathscapes Dollarton dystopia earth Engen environmental Eridanus escape exile existential exotic experience explore fear feeling female forest garden geographers Graham Greene Grave Greene's Greeneland Harmondsworth Hear homeless Howdendyke human humanistic important inscape involved J.R.R. Tolkien journey land landscape features literary literature live London Lowry's Lowryan Lunar Caustic Malcolm Lowry memory metaphor Metroland Mexico mind modern motor sounds mountains nature noise non-visual senses Nordahl Grieg notion novelist novels October Ferry odour placeless Porteous protagonist R.D. Laing region relationship river Roads rural Saturna Island scent seedy sensory sensuous shack smell smellscape social soundscape space symbols T.S. Eliot T'Chemics taste town trees Tuan urban Vancouver village visual Volcano wilderness York