What happens when contemporary cultural theory is applied to historical images? Dana Arnold explores the creative possibilities of revisiting representations of architecture armed with
contemporary theoretical models. The book centers on a topic too often taken for granted: architectural images of classical architecture as legible texts separate from the built remains. Arnold
aims to demonstrate that architectural representations from the eighteenth century are, like words, potent representations of thoughts with their own syntactical, linguistic, and cultural
qualities. Arnold’s work is an essential addition both to the canon of knowledge of eighteenth-century architecture—the book offers an alternative to the positivism that is pervasive in studies
of eighteenth-century architecture-and to the broader interdisciplinary discourse around architectural aesthetics. Whilst other areas of eighteenth-century studies have benefited enormously
from literary criticism and theory, the study of the built environment in the period has remained largely oblivious to the interpretive possibilities offered by that field.