Changing the Reading of Tradition: Promoting the New as the Old in the English Landscaping Revolution

In the early eighteenth century, English landscaping noticeably shifted its model from the regularity of art to the irregularity of nature. Even though this stylistic change contradicted the most elementary principles of the classical European aesthetic tradition, its proponents almost perversely cited ancient European writers in its support and justification. To understand the peculiar promotion of the new as the old in the English landscaping revolution, the involved history should be studied in a larger international and cross-cultural context than Europe. This larger context, I argue, will disclose an intricate assimilation of the new into the old, a process which enabled the early English garden reformers to change the reading of tradition and to gain legitimacy for their otherwise potentially unacceptable ‘beauty without order.’