Thomas Telford’s tour in the Highlands: shaping the wild landscape through word and image
- Submitting institution
-
Glasgow School of Art
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 3789
- Type
- C - Chapter in book
- DOI
-
10.1163/9789004361119_013
- Book title
- Art and Science in Word and Image: Exploration and Discovery
- Publisher
- Brill
- ISBN
- 978-90-04-36110-2
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of publication
- January
- Year of publication
- 2019
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- Yes
- Number of additional authors
-
0
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This chapter is about the representation of science and technology in the service of exploration and discovery, arguing that engineers’ reports and plans in the Romantic period contributed to the genre of travel writing. It is explicitly addressed to questions of text/image translation and incommensurability, using close reading and visual analysis, and informed by research on representations in scientific and technological practices. It argues that Telford as engineer created a narrative for the Highland landscape through his distinct form of literary and visual expression that was interdisciplinary and intertextual; a complement to his work as a civil engineer in shaping the landscape itself, opening it up to travel and human occupation in the service of the Hanoverian government. The interpretive framework addresses a gap in research; neither part of the extensive literary analysis of touristic and colonial publications, nor part of celebratory ‘great engineers’ oeuvre, but between these areas. The research is informed by and aligned with research on Romantic science, national identity in landscape representation, formation of ‘Great Britain’ and the notion of ‘literary engineers’ at this period (Marsden et al 2013). It addresses specifically Telford’s own self-presentation as a professional engineer, the translation of design into realisation, and thus the material and infrastructural ramifications of the construction of the Highlands as a ‘wild’ tourist site. Describing his journeys in Northern Scotland, Telford worked hard to efface any sense of strain or unfamiliarity about travel on his roads and canals. Even though his own travels were arduous and exploratory, Telford remediated through words and drawn plans a landscape that was shaped around a rational transport infrastructure, inviting Romantic travellers to roll smoothly into the sublime, and contributing to the formation of travel writing and landscape tourism.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
