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Vantage Points in the Seventeenth-century City
- Author(s):
- Christine Stevenson (see profile)
- Date:
- 2008
- Group(s):
- Architectural History and Theory
- Subject(s):
- Architecture, History, England--London
- Item Type:
- Article
- Tag(s):
- Architectural history, London, Stuart literature
- Permanent URL:
- http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/9t74-my23
- Abstract:
- Late twentieth-century social and linguistic theory tells us that the view from the tall building transforms us into analysts and historians, disembodied readers of the civic ‘text’. This paper argues that the proposition would have been familiar to seventeenth-century City-dwellers, and does so by pursuing the experience of the elevated observer, or rather, how that experience was depicted, in pictures and words. A great deal of ingenuity, as well as money, was invested in building high after the Great Fire of 1666; a decade later, the anxieties surrounding the prospect of a Catholic royal succession began to prompt some peculiarly forceful anticipations of that modern theoretical construction, the uniquely ‘advantaged’ spectator.
- Metadata:
- xml
- Published as:
- Journal article
- Status:
- Published
- Last Updated:
- 4 years ago
- License:
- All Rights Reserved
stevenson08c.pdf