Date of Graduation

2003

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Type

MA

Committee Chair

Marilyn Francus

Abstract

Working under the general category “picturesque aesthetics,” my thesis examines the connections between colonial and patriarchal control in late eighteenth-century aesthetic discourses. I place the longstanding and tradition conflation of Woman/Nature-landscape in dialog with picturesque aesthetics’ gendered rhetoric and explicit concerns with nationalism, tourism, and history. When placed in the context of then contemporary gender stereotypes and eighteenth-century imperial efforts, picturesque aesthetics employ a colonial methodology for controlling and appropriating a femininity embodied in the national landscape.

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