"This collection is a highly successful encounter of interpretations of the idea of the garden in historical and present-day societies by joining different methods, points of view, research areas and perspectives well introduced by the titles of its four parts: "Madeira: A Garden in the Sea?", "Gardens as Temporal and Spatial Category. Cultural and Literary Approaches", "Gardens as an Expression. Sociocultural Perspectives" and "Re-Creating the Archetypal Garden - Discourses and...
More Description"This collection is a highly successful encounter of interpretations of the idea of the garden in historical and present-day societies by joining different methods, points of view, research areas and perspectives well introduced by the titles of its four parts: "Madeira: A Garden in the Sea?", "Gardens as Temporal and Spatial Category. Cultural and Literary Approaches", "Gardens as an Expression. Sociocultural Perspectives" and "Re-Creating the Archetypal Garden - Discourses and Practices". Among the advantages of the book Gardens of Madeira - Gardens of the world. Contemporary approaches one could point to the editors' tendency to unite both practical and theoretical dimensions of the research field under discussion. It allows its readers to join the philosophical and literary analysis dedicated to gardens in the context of the triad "Nature - Art - Science" with the very concrete and actual attempts to introduce the archetypical aspects of gardens in various social activities, such as the search for recreational spaces or intergenerational approximation." Danuta Künstler-Langner (Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun, Poland) "This book under review certainly could be of interest to a wider public with an interest in the Humanities as it offers a fresh attempt to reconstruct social and cultural spaces through the ideas of gardens. It is also worth mentioning that the Gardens of Madeira - Gardens of the world. Contemporary approaches covers very wide topical and geographical areas, joining e. g. the analysis from the well represented European communities (including noticeable representations from the less known former Eastern Bloc countries), and some non-European societies (American, African and Asian). That certainly makes the referred book the widest present day approach to the literary, sociological and cultural representations of gardens. This book under review is also an excellent attempt to join leading research and social activity related to this topic. In fact, the volume provides a pattern to connect gardens to the modern and post-modern rules of self defining, reading the Other, interpreting the world/national/cultural literatures, as well as to the various attempts to introduce the idea of gardens into the basic spatial and temporal structures of contemporary mostly urban societies." Maria do Carme Fernàndez Pèrez-Sanjuliàn (University of Coruua, Spain)