Locus amoenus
Locus amoenus (Latin for "pleasant place") is a literary topos involving an idealized place of safety or comfort. A locus amoenus is usually a beautiful, shady lawn or open woodland, or a group of idyllic islands, sometimes with connotations of Eden or Elysium.<ref>J. B. Russell, A History of Heaven (1998) p. 21</ref>
Ernst Robert Curtius wrote the concept's definitive formulation in his European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (1953).<ref>E. R. Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (1953) p. 183-202</ref>
Characteristics
A locus amoenus will have three basic elements: trees, grass, and water. Often, the garden will be in a remote place and function as a landscape of the mind. It can also be used to highlight the differences between urban and rural life or be a place of refuge from the processes of time and mortality.
In some works, such gardens also have overtones of the regenerative powers of human sexuality<ref>For more information, see Evett, David. "Paradice's Only Map": The "Topos" of the "Locus Amoenus" and the Structure of Marvell's "Upon Appleton House." PMLA. 85.3(1970):504-513.</ref> marked out by flowers, springtime, and goddesses of love and fertility.<ref>W. Shullenberger, Lady in the Labyrinth (2008) p. 260</ref>
History
Classical
The literary use of this type of setting goes back, in Western literature at least, to Homer,<ref>J. B. Russell, A History of Heaven (1998) p. 21</ref> and it became a staple of the pastoral works of poets such as Theocritus and Virgil. Horace (Ars Poetica, 17) and the commentators on Virgil, such as Servius, recognize that descriptions of loci amoeni have become a rhetorical commonplace. Arcadia, a rugged region of Greece, was frequently depicted as a locus amoenus whose inhabitants lived in harmony with nature; in time, this usage evolved to describe a broader utopian vision based around simple, pastoral living.
In Ovid's Metamorphoses, the function of the locus amoenus is inverted, to form the "locus terribilis". Instead of offering a respite from dangers, it is itself usually the scene of violent encounters.<ref>John David Zuern, "Locus Amoenus"</ref>
Medieval
The Middle Ages merged the classical locus amoenus with biblical imagery, as from the Song of Songs.<ref>W. Shullenberger, Lady in the Labyrinth (2008) p. 261</ref>
Matthew of Vendôme provided multiple accounts of how to describe the locus amoenus,<ref>H. Pleij, Dreaming of Cockaigne (2013) p. 216</ref> while Dante drew on the commonplace for his description of the Earthly Paradise: "Here spring is endless, here all fruits are."<ref>Dante, Purgatory (1971) p. 293</ref>
Renaissance
The locus amoenus was a popular theme in the works of such Renaissance figures as Ariosto and Tasso.<ref>W. Shullenberger, Lady in the Labyrinth (2008) p. 260</ref>
Shakespeare made good use of the locus amoenus in his long poem Venus and Adonis.<ref>P. Cheney, Shakespeare, National Poet-Playwright (2004) p. 102</ref> The trope also fed into his construction, in many plays, of what Northrop Frye has called the Shakespearean "green world" – a space that lies outside of city limits, a liminal space where erotic passions can be freely explored, away from civilization and the social order – such as the Forest of Arden in As You Like It.<ref>A. Shurbanov, Shakespeare's Lyricized Drama (2010) p. 197</ref> A mysterious and dark, feminine place, as opposed to the rigid masculine civil structure, the green world can also be found featured in A Midsummer Night's Dream and Titus Andronicus.[citation needed]
Modern
In the 20th century the locus amoenus appears in the work of T. S. Eliot, as in the Rose Garden of Burnt Norton<ref>Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism (1973) p. 321</ref> and in J. R. R. Tolkien's Shire<ref>A. Neset, Arcadian Waters and Wanton Seas (2009) p. 30</ref> and Lothlórien.<ref>Tom Shippey, J. R. R. Tolkien (2001) p. 196-7</ref>
Sinister doubles
The split-off obverse of the locus amoenus is the apparently delectable but in fact treacherous garden, often linked to a malign sexuality, as in Circe's palace or the Bower of Bliss in Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene.<ref>Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism (1971) p. 149</ref>
