Classicism and modernity

"The book redefines the significance of Palladianism as one of the central discourses of eighteenth-century British culture. By revealing the interdependence between British and Continental architecture of the period, and by reintegrating Palladian classicism with contemporary British culture in all its manifestations (from imported opera to science, commerce and argriculture), this work challenges the current scholarly paradigm which constructs Palladianism as an essentially indigenous phenomenon (a "national taste" in architecture) and as an elitist high art form. The author interprets contemporary architectural publications as fundamental instruments of nascent modernity (aiding rationalization of the state and its institutions), and demonstrates that Palladian classicism promoted in these texts was a site of negotiation between traditional and modern concepts of political power and patronage, national identity, and social order. In Arciszewska's ground-breaking analysis we see classicism revealed as an ideological and visual regime filling the void created by the collapse of traditional, pre-modern foundations of authority-- as a contested terrain in which power and ideology, class, gender and national interests intersected with great intensity, reshaping eighteenth-century Britain."--Dust jkt.