Locus Amoenus Gardens and Horticulture in the Renaissance Renaissance Studies Special Issues Series

Locus Amoenus provides a pioneering collection of new perspectives on Renaissance garden history, and the impact of its development. Experts in the field illustrate the extent of our knowledge of how the natural world looked and how humans related to their environment.

• A ground-breaking collection of new perspectives on garden history
• Essays demonstrate the extent of our knowledge of how the natural world looked and how humans related to their environment
• The book's broad coverage includes botany and herbals, literary reflections of changing ideas of landscape and nature, and human's place within it
• Contributors come from a wide range of experts, including archaeologists, scholars and the librarian and archivist to the Royal Horticultural Society
• Reflects the growing emergence of this field, which has been assisted both by archaeology and ideas from green studies and environmental criticism
• Richly illustrated throughout

Notes on contributors ix

Introduction Locus amoenus: gardens and horticulture in the Renaissance
Alexander Samson1

1 The world of the Renaissance herbal
Brent Elliott24

2 Clinging to the past: medievalism in the English ‘Renaissance’ garden
Paula Henderson42

3 River gods: personifying nature in sixteenth-century Italy
Claudia Lazzaro70

4 Dissembling his art: ‘Gascoigne’s Gardnings’
Susan C. Staub95

5 ‘My innocent diversion of gardening’: Mary Somerset’s plants
Jennifer Munroe111

6 Outdoor pursuits: Spanish gardens, the huerto and Lope de Vega’s Novelas a Marcia Leonarda
Alexander Samson124

7 Experiencing the past: the archaeology of some Renaissance gardens
Brian Dix151

Index 183

Alexander Samson lectures on early modern Spain and Latin America at University College London. He is also the co-director of the Centre for Early Modern Exchanges. His research interests include Anglo-Spanish intercultural exchange, the marriage of Philip II and Mary Tudor, and the Golden Age comedia. He is the editor of The Spanish Match: Prince Charles’s Journey to Madrid, 1623 (2006) and A Companion to Lope de Vega (with Jonathan Thacker, 2008).