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(More customer reviews)Analysing five examples of `riverscapes' (the suffix -scapes, following Appadurai's coinage, should be understood as a perspectival construct which implies a reading of something that is inflected by the viewers' historical and political situation), Cusack directs her readers to the spiritual and symbolic value of rivers as an integral part of the construction of nationality. In an age marked by the fluidity of many national boundaries (resulting in the disruption of traditional concepts of territorial integrity), Riverscapes is an outstanding academic work which redirects our attention to the importance of pictorial representation of the national territory and explains how "geographical imaginings of place are an essential component of nationalism" (p.15).
Cusak unveils the social, economic, political and ethnic significance of five rivers (and riverbanks) to demonstrate how they can be understood as repositories of identity: the Hudson, the Thames, the Seine, The Volga and the Shannon. These rivers became, through painterly and graphic media, tokens of a shared ancestry while they unfolded (and staged) relations and assertions of power, class, royal and corporate display, ethnic allegiance or erasure, life style, economic dominance and spiritual quest. Taking the Hudson as example, readers will be able to realise how the Hudson River School painters crystallised images of the riverbanks which rely on a belief in pioneering Christian endeavour in which the wilderness belonged to the chosen people who were sent by God to tame it. The scenery, dominated by the white male Christian hero that embodied the chosen people, and the vast horizons (from which Indians have been elided) are pervaded by this type of gaze. These landscapes are painterly assertions of the idea of `chosenness'. The Seine, on the other hand, became the backdrop to Impressionist renderings of leisure moments and a leisured, affluent middle-class that found in boating and other similar pursuits on the Seine an expression of their social and economic status.
Riverscapes will help you understand the origins of present-day visually coded realities while Cusack proves how images of beauty elicit positive feelings of pride, belonging and sharing (even if they subsume sharp inner conflicts). The importance of the pictorial representation of `riverscapes', understood as shared common legacy to certain groups, is anchored on solid, compelling arguments.
Supple, elegant writing adds to the quality of a book that is, at once, dense in meaning, a fresh, captivating approach to matters of nationalism, and pleasurable reading.
This book will prove invaluable reading to all those researching and interested in the fields of cultural geography, visual studies, cultural studies, nationalism and art history. Definitely, a must read.
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Riverscapes and National Identities (Space, Place, and Society)Painted riverscapes such as Claude Monet's impressions of the Seine, Isaak Levitan's Volga views, and Thomas Cole's Hudson scenery became iconic not least because they embodied nationalist ideas about place and about culture. At a time when nationalism was taking root across Europe and the United States, the riverscape played an important role in transforming the abstract idea of the nation into a potent visual image. It not only offered a picture of a nation s physical character, but also, through aspects such as style, the figures portrayed, and the nature of the implied spectator, it presented a cultural ideal.In this highly original book, Tricia Cusack explores the significance of painted riverscapes for the creation of national identities in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Europe and America. Focusing on five rivers the Hudson, the Volga, the Seine, the Thames, and the Shannon the author shows how just as ancient river mythologies served the ends of powerful religious and political groups, modern riverscapes incorporated dominant, often religious conceptions of the nation. Drawing on the symbolic potential of rivers to represent life and time, the riverscape provided a metaphor for the mythic stream of national history flowing unimpeded out of the past and into the future.
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