In Grammars of Approach, Cynthia Wall offers a close look at changes in perspective in spatial design, language, and narrative across the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that involve, literally and psychologically, the concept of “approach.” In architecture, the term “approach” changed in that period from a verb to a noun, coming to denote the drive from the lodge at the entrance of an estate “through the most interesting part of the grounds,” as landscape designer Humphrey Repton put it. The shift from the long straight avenue to the winding approach, Wall shows, swung the perceptual balance away from the great house onto the personal experience of the visitor. At the same time, the grammatical and typographical landscape was shifting in tandem, away from objects and Things (and capitalized common Nouns) to the spaces in between, like punctuation and the “lesser parts of speech”. The implications for narrative included new patterns of syntactical architecture and the phenomenon of free indirect discourse. Wall examines the work of landscape theorists such as Repton, John Claudius Loudon, and Thomas Whately alongside travel narratives, topographical views, printers’ manuals, dictionaries, encyclopedias, grammars, and the novels of Defoe, Richardson, Burney, Radcliffe, and Austen to reveal a new landscaping across disciplines—new grammars of approach in ways of perceiving and representing the world in both word and image.
Author(s): Cynthia Wall
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Year: 2019
Language: English
Pages: 355
Tags: Grammars, Narrative
Contents......Page 6
List Of Illustrations......Page 8
A Note On My Text......Page 10
Acknowledgments......Page 12
Introduction......Page 16
1. The Architectural Approach......Page 26
The Etymology Of “Approach” (N. S.)......Page 28
The Concept Of Approach (N. S. And V.): The “Ancient” And The “Modern” Lines......Page 32
The Language Of Approach (V.): Architectural And Syntactical Design......Page 42
The Traveler’S Approach......Page 50
The Novelist’S Approach......Page 54
2. The Prepositional Building......Page 64
The Park Gate Lodge......Page 66
The Topographical View: Angles And Staffage......Page 77
A Bridge To The Next Part: “A Village On, Or Across, The Thames”......Page 97
3. The Topographical Page......Page 106
The Typographical Landscape......Page 108
The Letters On The Page......Page 111
I. Fonts......Page 114
II. Capitals And Italics......Page 119
III. Catchwords......Page 125
IV. Pointing......Page 133
4. The Grammar In Between......Page 152
The Rise Of Grammar......Page 154
The Rise Of The Preposition......Page 159
I. Richardson As Printer......Page 170
II. Clarissa And Prepositions......Page 174
III. Clarissa As Preposition......Page 180
5. The Narrative Picturesque......Page 186
Syntactical Architecture In Textual Landscapes......Page 188
I. Bunyan: “Thinges...Included In One Word”......Page 189
Ii. Defoe: “In A Word”......Page 196
Iii. Haywood: “In Fine, She Was Undone”......Page 200
The Narrative Picturesque......Page 207
I. Radcliffe And The Prepositional Phrase......Page 209
Ii. Burney And The Psychological Interior......Page 225
Iii. Austen And The Approach To The Interior......Page 235
Coda: A Topographical Page......Page 246
Notes......Page 250
Bibliography......Page 300
Index......Page 336
