(Re)Reading the Landscape

Insights from literary theory are applied to the analysis of landscapes. It is suggested that the concepts of textuality, intertextuality, and reader reception may be of importance to those interested in the notion that landscapes are read in much the same way as literary texts. It is further suggested that landscapes can be seen as texts which are transformations of ideologies into a concrete form. This is an important way in which ideologies become naturalized. What is lacking in the radically relativistic theoretical perspective of much of twentieth-century literary theory, however, is a consideration of the sociohistorical and political processes through which meaning is produced and transformed. Examples of the relation between texts and landscapes from several different types of societies are then offered.