Introduction

Abstract

The introduction explains why the categories of gender, genre, and geopoetics provide a broad approach for organizing a wide range of texts. It begins with an introduction to ancient garden studies: literary, art historical, and archaeological. It offers definitions of the types of Roman gardens, the identification of gardens in literature, and methods of analyzing these representations. Contemporary spatial theory has encouraged an exploration of the relationship between identity and the environment and how places are invested with meaning and connect with cultural practices. Archaeology reveals much about actual Roman gardens, but ancient texts tend to follow literary and generic models. In Latin literature gardens figure as symbols of literary artistry (or geopoetics). The gender dynamics of literary gardens depict men as cultivators and women as cultivated and while male associations with the garden represent a range of positive ideals, women in gardens are usually sexualized.