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In The Historical Austen <\/em> , William Galperin notes that Austen understood that certain kinds of realistic art or aesthetics could naturalize and \u201crealize\u201d what is really only an ideological construct. And he notes the somewhat surprising political ramifications of such aesthetic theories. He points to the theory of the picturesque, which Austen satirizes in a number of works ( Northanger Abbey <\/em> , for instance): <\/p>\n Galperin cites Ann Bermingham, who in her Landscape and Ideology <\/em> suggests that while picturesque theory appealed to the wealthy classes of landowners, \u201cat a deeper level the picturesque endorsed the results of agricultural industrialization\u201d that was undermining the \u201cpaternalistic, quasi-feudal system of reciprocal rights and duties\u201d that the picturesque, because of its \u201cemphasis on age\u201d was also promoting. <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In The Historical Austen , William Galperin notes that Austen understood that certain kinds of realistic art or aesthetics could naturalize and \u201crealize\u201d what is really only an ideological construct. And he notes the somewhat surprising political ramifications of such aesthetic theories. He points to the theory of the picturesque, which Austen satirizes in a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hermeneutics"],"yoast_head":"\n
The picturesque \u201cwas an aesthetic where the \u2018natural\u2019 was restricted to a number of representational possibilities, none of which was comprehensive or faithful necessarily to what was \u2018out there.\u2019 To theorists of the picturesque . . . it was fine, indeed imperative, to conceive the natural as rough, ungoverned, and variegated so long as the scene was not also ugly or dull or fraught with any untoward surprises. In addition the particular animus of picturesque theory to the landscape improvements of such English \u2018gardeners\u2019 as Lancelot \u2018Capability\u2019 Brown and Humphrey Repton (a rebate that figures prominently in Mansfield Park) was unabashedly ideological in equating a certain kind of landscape gardening \u2013 one that was especially self-conscious in exposing the imprint of the human upon nature \u2013 with the leveling initiatives in France and at home. In a remarkable reconfiguration of political affiliations and identities, proponents of the picturesque were disposed to league wealthy individuals, who frequently initiated such improvements, with the \u2018revolutionary\u2019 masses in an effort to reclaim a middle (and higher moral) ground for the social order, at once conservative and middle class, in whose interests they were writing.\u201d <\/p>\n