Sponsored by Departments of Art & Art History; History; Religion; DMCL The Cosmic Landscape in French and English Gardens Many of the components of suburban gardens, urban parks, and golf courses in North America originated in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French and English garden design: lawns, pools and fountains, sculptures, diverse varieties of shrubs, trees and flowers all aesthetically grouped. But how did people in the past think about nature? And how did those ideas influence the forms of the extensive new environments that the owners created at great expense to surround their residences? Gardens were sites of many experiences: jokes, mysteries, philosophizing, deep emotions, political discourse. They were a locus of power as well. By pouring resources into these spaces, visited and admired by subjects and foreign guests alike, by filling them with inventive forms, infusing them often with allusions to the classical past, and planting exotic botanical specimens from distant lands, royalty and aristocrats presented themselves as deeply learned as well as privileged. These gardens also frequently aligned their patrons with cosmic forces, thereby suggesting the owners’ divinely granted dominion over their lands and the world. Yet the power of nature’s own inventive capacities and how it was intertwined both with human artifice and the patron’s wish to express his authority was also an important aspect of these vast gardens, which this lecture will explore.