Locus Amoenus

Locus Amoenus provides a pioneering collection of new perspectives on Renaissance garden history, and the impact of its development. Experts in the field illustrate the extent of our knowledge of how the natural world looked and how humans related to their environment.

• A ground-breaking collection of new perspectives on garden history
• Essays demonstrate the extent of our knowledge of how the natural world looked and how humans related to their environment
• The book's broad coverage includes botany and herbals, literary reflections of changing ideas of landscape and nature, and human's place within it
• Contributors come from a wide range of experts, including archaeologists, scholars and the librarian and archivist to the Royal Horticultural Society
• Reflects the growing emergence of this field, which has been assisted both by archaeology and ideas from green studies and environmental criticism
• Richly illustrated throughout

Notes on contributors ix

Introduction Locus amoenus: gardens and horticulture in the Renaissance
Alexander Samson 1

1 The world of the Renaissance herbal
Brent Elliott 24

2 Clinging to the past: medievalism in the English ‘Renaissance’ garden
Paula Henderson 42

3 River gods: personifying nature in sixteenth-century Italy
Claudia Lazzaro 70

4 Dissembling his art: ‘Gascoigne’s Gardnings’
Susan C. Staub 95

5 ‘My innocent diversion of gardening’: Mary Somerset’s plants
Jennifer Munroe 111

6 Outdoor pursuits: Spanish gardens, the huerto and Lope de Vega’s Novelas a Marcia Leonarda
Alexander Samson 124

7 Experiencing the past: the archaeology of some Renaissance gardens
Brian Dix 151

Index 183

Alexander Samson lectures on early modern Spain and Latin America at University College London. He is also the co-director of the Centre for Early Modern Exchanges. His research interests include Anglo-Spanish intercultural exchange, the marriage of Philip II and Mary Tudor, and the Golden Age comedia. He is the editor of The Spanish Match: Prince Charles’s Journey to Madrid, 1623 (2006) and A Companion to Lope de Vega (with Jonathan Thacker, 2008).

Agrarian innovation and new empirical approaches to plants and their cultivation transformed the landscape and natural world in early modern Europe. These changes not only laid the foundations for the industrial revolution, but reflected changing political and scientific ideas, social relations and religious thought. New leisure pursuits, the first public parks and ideas surrounding philosophical retreat developed together as the ownership of green spaces and their uses shifted between function and recreation.

Within Locus Amoenus, Alexander Samson provides a pioneering collection of new perspectives on garden history and the impact of its development, focusing on the Renaissance era. Contributions from a wide range of experts in the field guide readers through the world of the Renaissance herbal, medievalism in the English ‘Renaissance’ garden, the personification of nature in sixteenth-century Italy, Gascoigne’s Gardnings, Mary Somerset’s plants and Spanish Renaissance gardens.

These insightful contributions to Renaissance gardens and horticulture demonstrate the extent of our knowledge on how the natural world looked and how humans related to their environment. Ultimately, they reveal that gardens were a reflection of our changing relationship with nature and as such, a reflection of our development.