The Culture of Flowers
The Culture of Flowers
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Jack Goody's new book takes as its theme the symbolic and transactional uses of flowers in secular life and religious ritual from ancient Egypt to modern times. He links the use of flowers to the rise of advanced systems of agriculture, the growth of social stratification, and the spread of luxury goods, looking at the history of aesthetic horticulture in Europe and Asia. Other themes which emerge are the role of written texts in building up a culture of flowers; the importance of trade and communications in disseminating and transforming attitudes to flowers; the rejection on puritanical grounds of flowers and their artistic representation, and the multiplicity of meanings which flowers possess. Written from a broad temporal and geographical perspective, this original and wide-ranging book will appeal not only to anthropologists and social historians but also to anyone interested in flowers and their symbolic function across the centuries.
- Best-selling internationally known author
- Broad subject with non-academic appeal
- Many illustrations
- No other book treats the subject in this way
Reviews & endorsements
'… his book is full of interest for anyone who wonders why people love flowers.' The Independent on Sunday
'A bouquet of a book, this compendium of floral anthropology blossoms with detail … a sequence of brilliantly informed essays …'. The Observer
'With ambitious comprehensiveness, this new study charts the social and symbolic significance of flowers down the ages … a pioneering work: intelligently argued, encyclopaedic in its learning, and handsomely produced.' The Sunday Telegraph
'In this beautifully produced volume, Jack Goody … provides a majestic tour de monde of the culture of flowers … This encyclopedic compendium is in addition to being erudite, readable and interdisciplinary in focus, a must for all those interested in flowers from any perspective.' Choice
'… a richly stimulating account of a wonderful subject.' The Financial Times
Product details
February 1993Paperback
9780521424844
480 pages
244 × 172 × 28 mm
0.989kg
64 b/w illus. 14 colour illus. 3 tables
Unavailable - out of print October 2001
Table of Contents
- List of illustrations
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1. Flowers in Africa
- 2. In the beginning: gardens and paradise, garlands and sacrifice
- 3. The decline of flower culture in Europe
- 4. Flowers without representation in Islam
- 5. The return of the rose in medieval Western Europe
- 6. Icons and iconoclasm in the Renaissance
- 7. The growth of the market
- 8. The secret Language of Flowers in France: specialist knowledge or fictive ethnography
- 9. The Americanisation of the foreign mind
- 10. The popular culture of flowers in Europe
- 11. Garlands in India: the marigold and the jasmine
- 12. The 'four gentlemen of flowers' in China
- 13. 'Let a hundred flowers bloom': the New Year in South China
- 14. A distant reading
- References
- Index.
