TY - JOUR
KW - Symbolism
KW - Waterloo County
KW - Pennsylvania Germans
KW - Mennonites
KW - Landscaping
KW - Farmers
AU - Nancy-Lou Patterson
AB - The Waterloo Region Swiss-German Mennonite farmstead reconciles in its paradisal structure three polarities: male/female, farmstead/world, and God/humankind. Perpetuating a landscape developed in Pennsylvania from European traditions, it combines a large independent landholding with a centrally clustered steading including a large banked barn. Every landscape component is fenced and utilized in a charactersitic pattern. The barn, with strawshed and manure yard, reflecting fields, pastures, and meadows, forms a masculine polarity, while the house, with its outbuildings, garden, and orchard, forms a feminine polarity. Together, farmscape as 'locus amoenus' and garden as 'Paradiesgärtlein' embody a state of 'Gotteseligkeit' (blessedness), the goal of the pietistic spirituality of conservative Mennonite prayerbooks and hymnals. The iconographic vocabulary decorating textiles and other farmhouse adornments echoes this paradise theme. The redeemed landscape is conceptually separated from the fallen 'world' outside, while the prelapsarian relation between God and humankind is restored within. [J]
BT - Canadian Ethnic Studies
C7 - Unknown(0)
ID - 364
IS - 3
LA - English
M1 - Journal Article
M3 - Print(0)
PY - 1984
SN - 00083496
SP - 35
EP - 52
EP - 
T1 - Landscape and Meaning: Structure and Symbolism of the Swiss-German Mennonite Farmstead of Waterloo Region, Ontario
T2 - Canadian Ethnic Studies
VL - 16
ER -