Real, remembered and imagined landscapes have the potential to profoundly influence individual’s perceptions of themselves and their worlds, however, the transformative power of these landscapes is largely dependent on the individual’s attitudes and engagement with their surroundings.
Great concept, well expressed. This is reflected in Alain De Botton’s multi-modal travel memoir, The Art of Travel, which utilises renowned ‘guides’ from the cultural Western canon to affirm an ‘everyman’ persona which discusses changing human experiences in differing landscapes.
Awesome. Joanna Newsom’s song In California is similarly hybridised, drawing elements from Baroque, folk, alternative and avant-garde music, yet in contrast to De Botton, represents landscapes as detrimental and lacking in transformative power due to the persona’s lack of engagement with her landscapes.
Excellent introduction to your ORT as well, setting yourself up very well. Through a study of both texts, it is evident that individuals can perceive the same landscapes in different ways due to their differing contexts and levels of engagement; thus bringing upon their landscapes a new and individual meaning.
Good introduction! Excellent work, ideas well established, I'd like to see you link to the idea of representation just the tiniest bit more for your Prescribed Text, and also, set up your paragraph arguments for the reader.Exotic landscapes are often glorified to convey an unrealistic utopia, able to heal negative psychological states and bring about personal fulfilment. However, this process is not assured, with the transformative nature of real, imperfect landscapes being largely dependent on individual attitudes.
Excellent conceptual statement. This is conveyed in the introductory chapter, On Anticipation. De Botton employs the multi-modal genre of The Art of Travel to visually represent the appeal of imaginary, idealised landscapes, such as the double page spread of Hodge’s landscape painting Tahiti Revisited (1776). It depicts a beautiful but obviously glorified representation of a Tahitian river bathed in light and framed by picturesque mountains, accompanied by palm trees and two nude female figures bathing by the riverside.
Is this description necessary for a marker who knows your text very well? The painting exudes luxury and exoticism, and by tapping into the Western cultural canon, De Botton highlights how the Western tendency to romanticise exotic cultures can lead to disillusionment in the “reality of travel”.
Excellent. De Botton proceeds to claim, “Those responsible for the brochure had darkly intuited how easily their readers might be turned into prey…” This utilisation of predatory imagery, “darkly intuited” and “prey”, reveals how commercial institutions have appropriated this desire for personal happiness, representing real landscapes in a glorified and imaginary way, and contributing to the disillusionment by the audience of the “repetitions, misleading emphases and inconsequential plot-lines” in experiencing real landscapes.
Fantastic ideas, but that sentence did run the slightest bit too long in my opinion. Break it up a little? Rather, he argues paradoxically, “it seems we may best be able to inhabit a place when we are not faced with the additional challenge of having to be there”, as the fulfilling nature of the landscape, as imagined by the individual, is disrupted by their disillusioned state of consciousness.
Technique? This is highlighted through the juxtaposition of the rich imagery of the imagined “azure sky … sand the colour of sun-ripened wheat”, followed by the balancing statement “yet this description only imperfectly reflects what occurred within me, for my attention was in truth far more fractured and confused…” De Botton concludes that “happiness is not material or aesthetic but stubbornly psychological”, and that idealised or imagined representations of any landscape will not automatically inspire or transform the individual if they hold negative, closed-mined attitudes and do not engage with the landscape spiritually and emotionally.
Try to make your conclusion more distinct from your analysis. A fantastic paragraph with excellent analysis, superb.In California follows a persona who, due to an unspecified tragedy, seeks catharsis by moving to rural California, seeking what she imagines to be the transformative qualities of a new, natural landscape.
Be careful not to let the plot details form your concept. Yet, the persona becomes disillusioned as she cannot escape the trauma of her past, despite what she imagined to be the landscape’s omnipotent rehabilitating qualities. This is depicted through the varying representations of nature over the course of the song. Through alliteration and accumulation of natural imagery in “I tried to understand / the dry rot, the burn pile / the bark-beetle, the black bear”, the persona expresses her desire for what she imagines are the cleansing properties of the natural world. On each ‘b’ syllable, the singer anticipates the beat, and with the introduction of the rich resonant sound of the brass instruments, her excitement and expectations are conveyed.
What does this show us about the damaging nature of landscapes in general? Remember to use your texts as examples of greater ideas, not as the ideas themselves! However, the song ends with “for it has half ruined me / to be hanging around / among the Daphne”, using symbolism to convey her disillusionment with her new landscape as her mental state is unchanged, like Daphne, a plant with beautiful, scented flowers but sporting poisonous berries.
Falling slightly into retell there; good use of technique but what does it represent to a responder? Furthermore, the paradox of “I don’t belong to anyone” and “I don’t want to be alone” is reinforced as the two phrases are sung with the same melody, conveying that her imagined expectations do not match up to reality of her new landscape.
Again, a more distinct conclusion would be welcome here.
Natural landscapes, real and remembered, can have an immense impact upon the way individuals perceive new landscapes, as well as their own identities. This is shown in On the City and Country. De Botton explores the paradigms of renowned Romantic poet, William Wordsworth, of the cathartic nature of real and remembered natural landscapes in alleviating the negative psychological states derived from corrupting city environments.
Excellent start to the paragraph. Using hyperbole, De Botton conveys the extent to which Wordsworth believed cities “foster a family of life-destroying emotions including anxiety, envy and pride.” Himself “afflicted of these ills”, De Botton immerses himself in natural landscapes, using simile and imagery to juxtapose the absurdity of city life with the calming qualities of the natural world in, “The lights of surrounding offices looked like a grave old man bedecked in party decorations … soon it would be over the fields of Essex, then the marshes, before heading out over the mutinous North Sea waves… I felt my anxieties abate.”
Try to be a little more clever with your textual references; keep them as short as possible, it's all about efficiency! De Botton concludes that the natural world is “an indispensable corrective to … the smoke, congestion, poverty and ugliness of cities”. In fact, he extends this statement, arguing that even natural landscapes in their remembered form have the same cathartic powers; quoting from Wordsworth’s poem Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, “Though absent long … I have owed to them [the natural world]. / In lonely rooms, and mid the din / Of towns and cities, [these memories have] passed even into my purer mind / With tranquil restoration.”
The last few sentences have shifted heavily into retell. Read them back; are you presenting new ideas or just showing how techniques are used and retelling? A more explicit reference to the audience in this last sentence would probably fix you up. Through relying so overtly and distinctly upon Wordsworth’s poems, De Botton authenticates his view of the restorative power of remembered natural landscapes in corrupting city environments; concluding with the aphorism, “A few moments in the countryside …. could number among the most significant and useful of one’s life”.
In California also addresses the power of remembered landscapes, yet disputes De Botton’s representation of the cathartic powers of remembered and natural landscapes.
Love that you are playing these texts against each other in this way, works brilliantly.The persona attempts to “make a new start / in California”, mourning the “foolishness” of her past as the orchestra builds to a climax.
Retell. These instruments abruptly cut off, leaving the solo voice and harp, when the persona finds that “some nights / I just never go to sleep at all … / fully abandoning / any thought of anywhere / but home / my home.”
Retell. Truncated line length, coupled with the abrupt ending of the climax, conveys the persona’s confusion and isolation in her new natural environment, which she believed would be cathartic.
What does this show the audience about landscapes? Furthermore, despite the persona’s intense homesickness, she simultaneously knows that she will not find relief at old home. She represents it as “my home where the darkness does fall so fast / it feels like a mistake / (just like I told you it would / just like the Tulgeywood)”. Pathetic fallacy is used, with the “darkness” that falls on the persona’s home representing her own sorrows, while an intertextual reference is made to Lewis Carroll’s poem The Jabberwocky as the persona likens her old home with the hostile Tulgey Wood in which the Jabberwock was said to reside.
What is the effect on the audience of this representational choice to allude to the poem? What does it achieve? In the last stanza of the poem, the persona laments that “it has half ruined me to be hanging around … I am overgrown / I have choked my roots on earth / as rich as roe.”
Again, try to use only the part of the quote you need to convey your point - Be efficient! Through the use of natural metaphorical imagery, the persona likens her memories to lecherous “roots as rich as roe”, which have corrupted her new landscape and prevented growth, thus presenting natural and remembered landscapes in a negative “choking” light.
This conclusion highlights my concern for the paragraph; it seems to text focused. You've explored the ideas in the text, and this is great, but you haven't considered the ideas in a more general sense, to make it more relevant for the responder. This is vital in this Module, because ultimately, we explore the impact of representation on how ideas are portrayed to an audience! 
The immense spiritual effects of real landscapes upon individual identity are demonstrated in On the Sublime. Extending upon notions of the cathartic qualities of natural landscapes in On the City and Country, this chapter discusses how sublime landscapes instil within individuals a sense of the vastness and omnipotence of sublime landscapes, causing human anxieties to fade into an eternal perspective as they serve as a reminder of “human frailty and insignificance.”
Excellent introduction once again, your conceptual statements are extremely powerful. The power of sublime landscapes is reinforced visually through De Botton’s extensive use of pictures in this chapter, predominantly Romantic paintings of nature by renowned artists such as Loutherbourg, but also encompassing manufactured liminal landscapes such as airports and cityscapes, as seen in On Travelling Places.
Would this be allusion? Sublime landscapes force individuals to contemplate their significance in the world, or lack of, and “may help us to accept more graciously the great unfathomable events that molest our lives and will inevitably return us to dust”.
Great.Through the use of low modality language “may”, however, De Botton highlights that individuals can only gain these benefits if they genuinely engage with their landscapes. In the chapter On Possessing Beauty, De Botton personifies beauty as being “fugitive … and how long it stays in our memory depends on how intentionally we have apprehended it”. The ‘guide’ for the chapter, John Ruskin, advocates drawing and word painting landscapes, “because this teaches us to see; to notice, rather than to look.” Through including Ruskin’s instructional passages from his guide The Elements of Drawing, De Botton reveals how art-making forces individuals to notice the disparity between their preconceived notions of the landscape, compared to the landscape’s actual composition, leading to a greater understanding of self as it incites “a conscious understanding of the reason behind our attraction to certain landscapes.” Only through consciously engaging with landscapes can individuals can embrace the power of sublime landscapes and “accept without bitterness or lamentation the obstacles we cannot overcome and events we cannot make sense of”, with this spiritual interaction leading to self-enrichment and elucidating a definite sense of personal identity.
This is a stronger, more distinct conclusion. Good work.De Botton’s arguments can be applied to the persona from In California, who expects her new landscape to be automatically cathartic, without engaging in the landscape. This can be seen through the constant anecdotes which riddle the song, reinforced by her metaphorical description of her current life as “an endless eventide” of memories. During these anecdotes, the song is invariably in a happy, major key, ironically conveying a melancholy nostalgia in which the persona longs for the comfort of her old home yet is repelled by the trauma she experienced there. Because of her attachment to her past life, she fails to engage with her new environment, conveyed through the use of passive language “watching” and “wait all night”, such as in “watching the fox pick off my goldfish / from their sorry golden state”. Here, the antithetical images of “fox”, thought in folklore to signal deceased spirits, and “goldfish”, with connotations of prosperity and harmony, are used to represent how her memories prevent her from moving on and finding happiness in her new landscape. This spiritual entrapment is conveyed through the metaphor “You cannot come and see me / for you cross the border of my heart”, in which the persona likens her mental ‘borders’ with physical entrapment. Thus, the persona fails to engage with the beauty and sublimity of her new natural landscape, representing it instead as confining and oppressive, with this absence of contemplation leading to a lack of spiritual peace and enriched self-identity.
De Botton’s multi-modal text The Art of Travel addresses the effects of real, remembered and imagined landscapes upon individual identity and perspective, using ‘guides’ from the Classical Western canon to authenticate his arguments. It is only though investigating the true beauty of real landscapes that individuals elucidate a sense of self-awareness and spiritual fulfilment. In contrast, Joanna Newsom’s song In California represents the consequences of individuals failing to engage with their landscapes, leading to anguish, confusion and alienation.
I'd like ONE more sentence to bring everything together (both texts, both arguments) into one summative statement of position. Otherwise, great conclusion! 
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Topic: English Advanced Essay Marking (Modules Only) (Read 688673 times)