Habitat theory: "aesthetic satisfaction, experienced in the contemplation of landscape, stems from the spontaneous perception of landscape features which, in their shapes, colours, spatial arrangements and other visible attributes, act as sign-stimuli indicative of environmental conditions favourable to survival, whether they really are favourable or not." (p. 69)
Prospect-refuge: "at both human and sub-human level the ability to see and the ability to hide are both important in calculating a creature's survival prospects . . . . Where he has an unimpeded opportunity to see we can call it a prospect. Where he has an opportunity to hide, a refuge. . . . To this . . . aesthetic hypothesis we can apply the name prospect-refuge theory." (p. 73)
Types of prospect:
- the panorama (wide view); interrupted panorama (imagination able to complete)
- the vista (restricted by margins), usually defined by vertical boundaries; may be horizontal (e.g., under trees; from cave entrance)
- indirect: secondary panorama (a vantage point elsewhere, potential view: e.g., tower, crag, horizon)
- indirect: secondary vista: deflected (e.g., bend in river), offset (e.g., break in hedge)
Example annotated view (J. J. Meyer, "Das Schloss Räzüns und der Galanda-Berg" (1826), watercolour, 14.2 x 18.8 cm; Zentralbibliothek, Zurich):
Hazard: prospect and refuge take their meaning as defence: "To 'abolish' the hazard altogether is to deprive the prospect and the refuge of their meaningful roles, since they cannot be expected to react against a stimulus which is no longer there. Burke realized, and stated very explicitly, that exposure to a sense of the power of nature, or better still to a sense of the infinite, was indispensable to the experience of the Sublime . . . , and this is simply stating, in eighteenth-century terms, that prospect symbolism and refuge symbolism also demand a hazard symbolism to make them work." (p. 96)
Hazards: animate (human or non-human); inanimate (weather, instability (e.g., glacier), water, fire, locomotion (e.g., cliffs)); impediments (natural, artificial); deficiency (e.g., thirst) (p. 96)
Refuges: classified by function (hides / shelters); by origin (natural / artificial); by material (earth, e.g., caves; vegetation, e.g. forest, grass; mist); by accessibility (p. 102)
-- the coulisse: side entrances as on stage (p. 105)
Surfaces: convex suggest prospect; concave suggest refuge;
-- texture: earth (bare, vegetation; natural / artificial); water (flow, rough, etc.); nebulous (cloud, fog) (p. 107)
Locomotion: opportunity for movement within the landscape, importance of bridges, gateways, roads; and as focus of imagination:
"In contemplating the pattern of communications in a landscape the eye tends to fit together the visible components in such a way as to construct imaginary paths between its various parts. A carriage drive in a park, for instance, which dips out of sight into dead ground and reappears on a rising surface farther off, suggests a continuous channel of movement, even though its continuity cannot be perceived, and leads the eye forward towards its destination." (p. 119)
Magnets: "All descriptions of landscape paintings assume an attraction of the eye towards certain parts of the composition and these we may call 'magnets'. Depending on their character we may further distinguish them as 'magnetic points', 'magnetic lines' or' magnetic areas'." (p. 144)
Naturalizing: "Supreme among the devices for linking the artificial with the natural is the ruin, in which the harsh functionalism suggested by its form is tempered by its manifest incorporation within the natural order." (p. 173)