Comments on: metaphor and landscape

By: rob

rob — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:40:17 +0000

There’s a relatively well-known piece by the landscape architect Marc Treib entitled “Must Landscapes Mean?”. I’m pretty sure the answer is “no”. Which isn’t to say that there isn’t meaning in landscape (and hence a place for understanding landscape through literary devices, though I don’t think there’s a perfect overlap between the place of, say, the “mythical” and that of meaning), but that a framework for understanding the design of landscapes can’t begin (or stop) with meaning.

By: namhenderson

namhenderson — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 20:48:07 +0000

Rob, I guess what I am saying is that it seems like faslanyc is arguing that Blum in his piece he is trying to explicitly include metaphor as a category of interrogation. Whereas you seem to be arguing that in fact Blum isn’t interested in metaphor as a literary category at all, but is focused on a sort of shift in practice (the technical shift you were talking about). Personally i agree and have always found said technical shift to be the more compelling a realm of examination when compared to a more metaphor or literary/figurative method of practice/interrogation..

By: rholmes

rholmes — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:18:24 +0000

Sorry, Nam, I don’t follow you… (I’m not even sure I follow my own argument here — usually I feel reasonably clear about what I’m trying to say in a post, but not so much in this one.)

By: namhenderson

namhenderson — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:37:10 +0000

Or perhaps another way of stating it is that landscapes “operating successfully as landscapes that function in both ecological and urban systems” is literally the metaphor