The City as Text: The Politics of Landscape Interpretation in the Kandyan Kingdom

by James S. Duncan

• ISBN13: 9780521611961
• ISBN10: 0521611962
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-09-01
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

In this book James Duncan convincingly argues that landscapes are not only culturally produced, but that they also influence governing ideas of political and religious life. He analyzes this dialectic relationship between landscape and the pursuit of power in the royal capital of Kandy in the central highlands of Sri Lanka during the early years of the nineteenth century and demonstrates how the Kandyan landscape was consciously produced to further the perceived interests of the Kandyan kings. Using extensive archival sources, architectural analysis and mapping, the author reveals how the landscape was designed to foster a certain hegemonic reading that spoke of the power, benevolence and legitimacy of the kings in their capital.

Table of Contents

List of figures	viii
Preface	ix
Glossary of terms	xi
A note on transliteration	xiv
PART I INTRODUCTION	1	(8)
Introduction	3	(6)
PART II TOWARDS AN INTERPRETIVE FRAME	9	(76)
Landscape as a signifying system	11	(14)
The discursive field of Kandyan kingship	25	(17)
Concretizing the Sakran discourse: from landscape of the gods to landscape of the hero-kings	42	(17)
The Kandyan landscape, 1312--1815	59	(26)
PART III THE POLITICS OF LANDSCAPE INTERPRETATION IN EARLY-NINETEENTH-CENTURY KANDY	85	(100)
From discourse to landscape: a kingly reading	87	(32)
From landscape to civic ritual: a kingly reading	119	(35)
From landscape to discourse: contestatory readings and material interests	154	(27)
Conclusion	181	(4)
Appendix	185	(9)
Notes	194	(12)
List of references	206	(20)
Index	226