Contested Terrain: Differing Interpretations of Co. Wicklow's Landscape

Abstract

This paper looks at how Irish landscape was interpreted in the mid 1800s, when modern tourism in Ireland began. It attempts to discover the ideological structures present in this appreciation of Irish landscape, and it does so in relation with the Hall's description of Co. Wicklow landscape. It argues that there are two ‘socially constructed’ ways to read Irish landscape, the picturesque and the oral interpretations, which create senses of detachment and attachment respectively to the local terrain. It explores in this context how the picturesque corresponds to the way an outsider wishes to gaze upon a landscape, either as a colonialising landlord or as a tourist. Although the picturesque excludes human work from its vision, it was manufactured in the demesnes of the landlord class according to compositional techniques. But the ideological structure of the beautiful aspect of the picturesque excludes the native people who actually live in the landscape, because they are seen as a source of disharmony. The native gaze, on the contrary, creates a sense of attachment to the local place.