From the Temple to the Castle: An Architectural History of British Literature, 1660-1760

Visiting Britain the mid-18th century, Andre Rouquet wrote that in England more than any other country, every man would fain be his own architect. Not surprisingly, then, several of the most important 18th-century British authors were also practicing architects: John Vanbrugh, a playwrite, designed Blenheim Palace; the poet Alexander Pope offered architectural drawings for redesigning the houses of friends; and Horace Walpole claimed that the home he renovated, Strawberry Hill, inspired his Novel Castle of Otranto. The work of John Milton and Thomas Gray also exhibits an abiding interest architecture. By examining the connections between literature and architecture the work of these writers and by viewing architecture literary terms, Lee Morissey traces a narrative of cultural change the Augustan age and beyond. A literary scholar with a strong background architectural theory and practice, Morissey examines architectural references made by these authors and architectural publications familiar to them. Each chapter establishes a connection with architecture the careers of an author and then describes how a principal text - Paradise Lost, Provok'd Wife, An Essay on Man, Elegy Written a Country Churchyard, and Castle of Otranto - focuses the literary and historical issues of the period architectural terms. While some 20th-century architectural theorists have worried that treating architecture literary terms robs it of its social function, Morrissey argues that architecture can be a language and still participate political and social contexts, because language itself is political and social. The fruit of his argument is a unique intellectual history of late 17th- and early 18th-century Britain of use to scholars of architectural history and landscape architecture as well as of literature.