Enchanted, stereotyped, civilized

Gardens have been a crucial part in mythology and literature. Throughout English literature for example, the idea of a garden is a recurrent image; these images largely stem from the story of the Garden of Eden, which is found in the Genesis, the first book of the Bible. In the vast library of garden literature few books focus on what the garden means – for example a conceptual idea, a real or imagined place, and a place of action. Gardens reveal the relationship between culture and nature and can in sum be seen as civilized and ‘shaped’ and therefore domesticated nature. The present volume will discuss the topic of the garden in different theoretical contexts such as ecological, botanical, literary, filmic, art, historical and cultural ones. The single contributions investigate the representations of and the interconnections between gardens and the above named domains over a wide timescale, with consideration of how gardens are represented and used as symbols.