In the history of Western traditional aesthetics and art criticism

landscape has been regarded as an object gazed upon or a textual system deciphered from the perspective of the opposition between the subject and the object

existing in a static state. Postmodernism has brought a new paradigm shift in research

transitioning landscape studies from focusing on formal visuality to the research paths of semiotics and hermeneutics. It views landscape as a dynamic

transitional construct

a process of cultural practice that directly participates in an ecological revolution and the formation of a complex network of cultural

national

and political identities. The decoding of landscape as a utility of multiple cultural symbols has also led to an interdisciplinary combination with literature. Literary interpretation based on landscape strengthens the mediating function of landscape

primarily representing the interaction among landscape

power

nostalgia

and identity.