Picknick in zijn huidige vorm, gezellig buiten eten, ontstaat in de prille negentiende eeuw.
The second development was more profound. At about the same time as Sheridan was working himself into a fury in London, picnics were taken up by the emergent middle classes and moved outdoors. What caused this change is somewhat unclear; but the most likely explanation is that the socially aspirational simply applied a fashionable French word to a pre-existing practice, without being aware of its connotations. One of the results of this was that picnicking ceased to be associated with music and dancing and became a simple meal to which people were invited by a host. Another was that it became both more ‘genteel’ and – thanks to the idealisation of the countryside – more innocent.
In the decades which followed, the outdoor picnic found its way to the United States. As was only to be expected, it remained a genteel pursuit of the urban middle classes; but unlike in England, its bucolic setting was associated more with a flight from civilisation than with childlike simplicity. Though still tinged with innocence, depictions of American picnics – such as those by Thomas Cole and Winslow Homer – tended, therefore, to contain fewer rolling fields and more gnarled trees and craggy rocks – especially after the publication of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden (1854).
De middenklasse-versie van een decadent aristocratisch party-concept, gebaseerd op praktijken die al sinds mensenheugenissen door de eenvoudige lieden werden gebezigd.
Dat laatste aspect lijkt de auteur te zijn vergeten. Maar bon, voor de rest geen oninteressant artikel.
lees het volledige artikel maar vooral, geniet van de picknick.
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