“Luxury” and “the Surprising” in Sir William Chambers’ Dissertation on Oriental Gardening (1772): Commercial Society and Burke’s Sublime-Effect
Journal: Open Research Exeter (University of Exeter)
Year: 2013

This paper examines oriental landscape scenes of “luxury” and of “the surprising” as described by Sir William Chambers (1726–1796) in his Dissertation on Oriental Gardening (1772), and analyses them in relation to Edmund Burke’s theory of the sublime and the beautiful. I argue that Chambers’ depiction of these landscape scenes was motivated by a commitment to the importance of maintaining martial virtues in commercial and civil societies. The Dissertation puts forward the role of the surprising