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Lorn Clement, J.D., ASLA Landscape Architecture Kansas State University

New England Holocaust Memorial in Boston

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Narrative Tropes

Expanding a conceptual framework

Narrative theory and figurative language as a means of constructing meaning

Stories (content and expression)create impressions, organize experience, and create memories

Design strategiesNamingSequencingRevealing & concealingGatheringOpening

RealmsStoryInter-textualDiscursive

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Tropes

Four major tropes in LN (shortlist)metaphor

metonymy

synecdoche

irony

Forms of transference, ‘carrying over’ meaning from one term to another, ‘turning’ our language from the literal to the figurative …

Utility of expanding the list:

more concepts, strategies, ideas

precision in communication

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Bernstein, The Careful WriterThirty one entries in list of “rhetorical

figures and faults”

allegory and alliteration to zeugma

Parallels of thought and expression in the visual and literary arts

Layout of slides:Verbal definition and example

Visual example and explanation

Parallels

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Aristotle, Poetics, ‘proportional metaphor’ Comparison of components in parallel,

relationship is keyUsually used for explanation:“The garden walls surround space in the same

way that a parent’s arms hold a baby.”

Distinguish simile, which uses ‘like’, consider metaphor to be one implied

Analogy

Zipper walks at Nelson Atkins Museum; Dan Kiley

Functional concern: linking major parts of the spatial composition

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Antithesis

Juxtaposition of opposites

Pope: “The learn’d is happy nature to explore; the fool is happy that he knows no more.”

Hegelian dialectical reasoning:

thesis, antithesis, synthesis

Bloedel Reserve; Richard Haag

Spatial sequence

(garden of planes); moss garden; reflection garden

Intellect … gut … spirit

… zen experience / transcendence

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Irony

Incongruity between expectations or appearance, and reality …

In-betweenness

Subdivision names (toponyms) for the natural resources lost by development

Photo by Alan WardSplice Garden; Martha Schwartz

Gene splicing, green plastic … questioning traditional notions

… manipulation of Nature

Discrepancy b/t ideal and real

Greater diversity; less consistency in the interpretive community: ironies abound

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Metaphor

Direct substitution and identityComparison without word “like” Intellectual illumination with emotional

response Fewest parts

“Life is a dream”

Poetic vs. prosaic purposeAristotle, three fundamental categories of

language:– Logic (to explain, to be clear)– Rhetoric (to persuade)– Poetry (to inspire)

Holocaust Memorial in Boston; Stanley SaitowitzSix; steam rising; glass; Krystalnacht

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Metonomy

Uses concrete or tangible terms to convey abstract or intangible states

– ‘the heart’ for ‘the emotions’

Dominant trope in landscape architecture

Association by location– Historic preservation of sites (events,

periods, people, styles)

Magnolia leaf for Bessie Smith

Ross’s Landing, TN; S.I.T.E., EDAW, Stan Townsend

Double-entendre

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Oxymoron

Nonsensical or self-contradictory pairing – “Conspicuously absent”– “bittersweet” or “chiaroscuro”

Polarity … dynamic equilibrium?Humor

Shuttlecocks at the Nelson-Atkins; Clas Oldenburg

Scale jump

Reflection

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Paradox

Seemingly contradictory or absurd, but well-founded or true

“Don’t it always seem to go, you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til its gone …” Joni Mitchell, Big Yellow Taxi

Unity of Opposites?

Gas Works Park, Seattle;

Richard Haag

Recreational amenity and/or environmental threat?

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Personification

Endowing lifeless objects or ideas with human form or characteristics

Treib: “… long driven underground by the onslaught of urbanity, suburbanity and modern technology, the genius [loci] was a bit hesitant to reemerge in the 20th century sunlight, and as a result, came out squinting.”

Drawing by Machado & SilvettiPortal Building, Wagner Park, NYC; Machado and Silvetti

Embodying “a private contemplative individual … with a set of references to the body … to support the inscription of the individual in the park.”

Berrizbeitia and Pollack

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Synecdoche

Fragment represents the whole, or … vice versa

– hands for workers– wheels for cars– indicator species in LN

Relating individual phenomena into a more integral whole versus a literal or reductive nature (metonymy)

Walls as moving thresholds, boundaries

KSU campus; reflection on the growth of the institution over time

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Cautionary note

Bernstein … dangers in use of allegory:

1) Obscurity,

2) Unskillful presentation, or

3) Obviousness

Increasingly diverse interpretive community

Increasingly a-literate culture

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Cautionary note

Terence Hawkes on the expansion of lists:

“Of course it would be possible greatly to extend and complicate the list… But it is doubtful whether much is to be gained from this when it comes to the practical application of them …”

“The distinctions between the categories become so finely drawn … it becomes impossible to use them without a simple-minded ‘reduction’ of the work they are intended to illuminate.”

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Conclusion

More tropes: more strategies, concepts, ideas … stronger critical thought;more precise communication; and better criticism

Places are palimpsests, over-written texts

Hirsch on reading poetry:Making, constructing meaning: a collaborative

process between writer and reader(Treib, Must Landscapes Mean?)

Evolution of meaning and inevitable change do not preclude a profound experience of place

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Conclusion

Concentrate on the activity and doing of projects versus an array of verbal categories

Rely on intuition as much as intellect

Engage design processes fully, freely, with numerous iterations, multiple drafts

Describe, analyze, and interpret carefully, be the purpose to:

e x p l a i n p e r s u a d e i n s p i r e_______________________________________

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Literature Cited

Bernstein, Theodore M. 1968. The Careful Writer: A modern guide to English usage. New York: Atheneum. 

Berrizbeitia, Anita and Linda Pollack. 1999. Inside Outside: Between Architecture and Landscape. Gloucester, MA: Rockport.  

Burke, Kenneth. 1969. Essay entitled “Four Master Tropes” in A Grammar of Motives, Los Angeles, U.C. Press. 

Chatman, Seymour. 1978. Story and Discourse: Narrative structure in fiction and film, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 

Harmon, William. 2000 A Handbook to Literature, 8th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. 

Hawkes, Terence. 1972. Metaphor. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd. Hines, Susan. 2004. “Back to the drawing board: Diana Balmori urges

landscape architects to rediscover the language of ideas,” Landscape Architecture

Hirsch, Edward. 1999. How to Read a Poem. New York: Harcourt. Potteiger, Matthew and Jamie Purinton. 1998. Landscape Narratives: Design

practices for telling stories. New York: John Wiley and Sons. Saunders, William S., ed. 1998. Richard Haag: Bloedel Reserve and Gas

Works Park, Landscape Views I, New York: Princeton Architectural Press with Harvard University Graduate School of Design.

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Bloedel Reserve: Zen Garden that replaced the Garden of Planes designed by Richard Haag