The Bosco Parrasio as a site of pleasure and of sadness

This paper considers the way in which the garden, the � Bosco Parrasio �, in which members of Rome�s Arcadian Academy met was not only a place of pleasurable escapism, but also a place of longing and mourning. This can be seen in the design of physical spaces � each real site that hosted the � Bosco Parrasio � was required to display the lapidi di memoria � memorials to departed Arcadians, and often included funerary imagery. It is also found in the poetry written to be performed at those garden meetings, which often memorialised departed members, friends, or family. And, it is threaded through Crescimbeni�s poetic imaging of the Academy and its activities in his 1708 book L�Arcadia. This paper will explore those depictions of the Arcadian garden as a site of melancholy, mourning and nostalgia and explore the idea that the evocation of this �timeless� landscape as a space for melancholy is an example of nostalgia not as stultifying (as we often read it), but, as a necessary ingredient in cultural change.