Offa’s Dyke in the Landscape: Comparative Size and Topographical Disposition as Indicators of Function

Despite the large volume of published work on Offa’s Dyke there is no settled conclusion as to its original purpose. Many different and often conflicting theories exist, most of which can be put into three broad categories: defensive, political and economic. It is generally accepted that the monument’s disposition relative to the adjacent topography is significant for interpretations of purpose. In this article, field survey and GIS mapping techniques are applied with respect to the comparative size and topographical disposition of a stretch of central Offa’s Dyke in order to examine its utility as a defensive structure. This allows a re-evaluation of claims by Hill and Worthington (2003), among others, that the route of Offa’s Dyke was designed to optimise outlook by following the west facing brow of hills, or more generally to ‘command’ the western landscape. Evidence reported here shows that central Offa’s Dyke does not consistently prioritise western views. Instead, it was positioned in such a way as to often obscure westerly vistas, despite the opportunity to optimise such an outlook by relatively minor route adjustments. On the basis of the evidence reported, discussed in the context of the wider literature, it is concluded that central Offa’s Dyke should be interpreted as a physical obstacle rather than a defensive fortification. After a brief consideration of alternative theories of purpose it is suggested that Offa’s Dyke was most likely built with economic and political, rather than defensive, functions in mind. It is postulated that control of trade provides a plausible context for its construction.

Era of exploration and new topographics : annotated bibliographies of two landmark exhibitions

In 1975, two landscape photography exhibitions were held concurrently in upstate New York; Era of Exploration: The Rise of Landscape Photography in the American West, 1860-1885, at Buffalo's Albright-Knox Art Gallery and New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-altered Landscape, at the International Museum of Photography at the George Eastman House, in Rochester (now The George Eastman International Museum of Photography and Film). Era of Exploration treated nineteenth-century landscapes of the American West while New Topographics addressed contemporary landscape practices. Though applying fundamentally different approaches to their subject matter, each exhibition proved to be extremely important to the understanding and development of not only landscape photography, but also the genre's place in photographic history. This thesis examines the essential literature relating to these two landmark exhibitions, through the construction of two extensive annotated bibliographies. Each bibliography comprises nine sections that present and evaluate significant materials, published both before and after the exhibition, relating to the exhibitions and their publications, the included photographers, and the exhibitions' influence as revealed in subsequent specialized studies and general histories of photography. The bibliographies' chronological listing allows readers to re-construct the exhibitions, and to trace the development of historical and curatorial interest in the exhibitions, the photographers, and American western landscape photography. The thesis describes the process of compiling and annotating this literature and offers reflections on how these two important exhibitions, while employing very different curatorial approaches, influenced the aesthetics, methodologies and concepts of landscape photography.

Era of exploration and new topographics : annotated bibliographies of two landmark exhibitions

In 1975, two landscape photography exhibitions were held concurrently in upstate New York; Era of Exploration: The Rise of Landscape Photography in the American West, 1860-1885, at Buffalo's Albright-Knox Art Gallery and New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-altered Landscape, at the International Museum of Photography at the George Eastman House, in Rochester (now The George Eastman International Museum of Photography and Film). Era of Exploration treated nineteenth-century landscapes of the American West while New Topographics addressed contemporary landscape practices. Though applying fundamentally different approaches to their subject matter, each exhibition proved to be extremely important to the understanding and development of not only landscape photography, but also the genre's place in photographic history. This thesis examines the essential literature relating to these two landmark exhibitions, through the construction of two extensive annotated bibliographies. Each bibliography comprises nine sections that present and evaluate significant materials, published both before and after the exhibition, relating to the exhibitions and their publications, the included photographers, and the exhibitions' influence as revealed in subsequent specialized studies and general histories of photography. The bibliographies' chronological listing allows readers to re-construct the exhibitions, and to trace the development of historical and curatorial interest in the exhibitions, the photographers, and American western landscape photography. The thesis describes the process of compiling and annotating this literature and offers reflections on how these two important exhibitions, while employing very different curatorial approaches, influenced the aesthetics, methodologies and concepts of landscape photography.

“An entire past comes to dwell in a new house”: Topophilia and Jeremiad in Joan Didion’s Run River

In this paper, I will analyse Joan Didion’s poetics of praise and mourning in her first published novel, Run River, understanding the Western landscape she presents in it as an instance of Gaston Bachelard’s idea of the childhood home as a felicitous, eulogised space. I will argue that Didion’s depiction of the Sacramento Valley and the struggle of the families inhabiting it to accept the changing face of the landscape results in a jeremiad narrative of the West as paradise lost. Reflecting on the limitations both of Bachelard’s discussion of the childhood home and of the West as a mythographic space, I will conclude by assessing Didion’s topophilia and her ambiguous stance as a Western writer.

Lo spazio, lo sguardo, la voce

A good example of literature’s power to continuously rewrite geographic space by renewing inherited paradigms could be found in Prudentius’ Peristephanon, which provides a sort of re-mapping of the Western landscape in a martyrial perspective. My paper focuses in particular on the narration of Cassian’s martyrdom, providing a new in-depth analysis of Peristephanon IX. Firstly, the poet claims possession of the martyr’s place, Forum Cornelii, by dismissing its pagan past; then, in the ekphrasis of the fresco depicting the martyr, he enacts a complex itinerary of the gaze and elaborates a complex retractatio of the description of Juno’s temple of Verg. Aen. 1.446-465; finally, the introduction of a second-degree narrator provides an authoritative interpretation of the image, leading to appropriate devotion to the saint. The poem, thus, provides both an interesting example of integrated intermediality, and a reflection on the hermeneutical risks of unmediated viewing in a Christian scopic regime.