Riverscapes and National Identities

Painted riverscapes such as Claude Monet's impressions of the Seine, Isaak Levitan's Volga views, and Thomas Cole's Hudson scenery became iconic not least because they embodied nationalist ideas about place and about culture. At a time when nationalism was taking root across Europe and the United States, the riverscape played an important role in transforming the abstract idea of the nation into a potent visual image. It not only offered a picture of a nation's physical character, but also, through aspects such as style, the figures portrayed, and the nature of the implied spectator, it presented a cultural ideal. In this highly original book, Tricia Cusack explores the significance of painted riverscapes for the creation of national identities in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Europe and America. Focusing on five rivers - the Hudson, the Volga, the Seine, the Thames, and the Shannon - the author shows how just as ancient river mythologies served the ends of powerful religious and political groups, modern riverscapes incorporated dominant, often religious conceptions of the nation. Drawing on the symbolic potential of rivers to represent life and time, the riverscape provided a metaphor for the mythic stream of national history flowing unimpeded out of the past and into the future.

ISBN 0815632118   Volumes 1 ISBN13 9780815632115 (What's this?)   Weight (grammes) 499 Publisher Syracuse University Press   Published in New York Imprint Syracuse University Press   Series title Space, Place, and Society Format Hardback   Height (mm) 229 Publication date 15 Mar 2010   Width (mm) 152 DEWEY 304.23   Spine width (mm) 20 DEWEY edition DC22   Academic level Postgraduate Pages 224

		List of Illustrations
1		Introduction: Riverscapes and National Identities		1
2		The Chosen People: The Hudson River School and the Construction of American Identity		19
3		The Victorian Thames: England's Silver Stream or Britain's "Monster Soup"?		57
4		Impressions of Leisure on the Seine: National Identity and Forgetting in the French Third Republic		97
5		"Our Russian Essence": The Volga Riverscape and Cultural Nationalism		127
6		Shannon Riverscapes: Myth and Modernity in the Making of Inland		158
7		Naturalizing the Nation: Sacred Riverscapes and the Flow of History		190
		Works Cited		199
		Index		221

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