Arnold, D., 2013.

Landscape and National Identity

This chapter considers the creation of a British identity in relation to the ways in which the aesthetics of landscape worked to promote the idea of nation that encompassed the doctrine of popular freedom and liberty from external constraint. The author's case study is the Phoenix Park in Dublin and he uses this to show that nationhood and nationalism are self-consciously defined tools to focus loyalty and are part of the larger process of making cultural identities. The focus of this study is the national, imperial, and colonial aesthetic - how the aesthetics of landscape, and to a lesser extent here architecture, were used in the furtherance of particular social and political aims. The Phoenix Park allows us to think more broadly about the interaction between indigenous cultural identity and "Empire," and how this impacted on the making of "Britishness" in all its complexities. © 2013 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.