Description
Book SynopsisThroughout the
longue dureé of Western culture, how have people represented mountains as landscapes of the imagination and as places of real experience? In what ways has human understanding of mountains changed or stayed the same?
Mountain Dialogues from Antiquity to Modernity opens up a new conversation between ancient and modern engagements with mountains. It highlights the ongoing relevance of ancient understandings of mountain environments to the postclassical and present-day world, while also suggesting ways in which modern approaches to landscape can generate new questions about premodern responses. It brings together experts from across many different disciplines and periods, offering case studies on topics ranging from classical Greek drama to Renaissance art, and from early modern natural philosophy to nineteenth-century travel writing. Throughout, essays engage with key themes of temporality, knowledge, identity, and experience in the mountain landscape. As a
Trade ReviewGiven the tremendous variety of the topics covered in this collection, even non-specialists can expect to find something of potential interest, from classical myths to late antique or medieval religious figures, from early modern English legends to 18th- and 19th-century travelers’ accounts, to the US politician Thomas Jefferson’s renowned mountain retreat Monticello. * Mountain Research and Development *
[Hollis and König] not only expand and complicate the modern conceptualisation of the cultural meaning of mountains, but their dialogic approach significantly revises many current historical and literary assumptions. * The Classical Review *
A reassessment of existing presuppositions as to the value and importance of mountains at different points in time from antiquity onwards, as well as an instructive example of how to edit a volume that stays focused despite a large chronological scope. * Greece & Rome *
The appreciation of mountains in the premodern era, traditionally dismissed by scholars, is given a fresh longue-durée perspective in
Mountain Dialogues from Antiquity to Modernity that moreover shows how in later periods mountains were viewed through the lens of the classical past. -- Christina Williamson, Assistant Professor in Ancient History, University of Groningen, The Netherlands
Table of ContentsNotes on Contributors Acknowledgements Note on translations and Order of Chapters Introduction – Dawn Hollis (University of St Andrews, UK) and Jason König (University of St Andrews, UK) 1. Gessner’s mountain sublime – Dan Hooley (University of Missouri, USA) 2. ‘Famous from all antiquity’: Etna in classical myth and Romantic poetry – Cian Duffy (Lund University, Sweden) 3. The ‘authority of the ancients’? Seventeenth-century natural philosophy and aesthetic responses to mountains – Dawn Hollis (University of St Andrews, UK) 4. Toward a continuity of Alpinism in antiquity, premodernity, and modernity: Josias Simler’s
De Alpibus Commentarius (1574) and W. A. B. Coolidge’s French translation from 1904 – Sean Ireton (University of Missouri, USA) 5. Mountains and the holy in late antiquity – Douglas Whalin (The Catholic University of America, USA) 6. Erudite retreat: Jerome and Francis in the mountains – Janice Hewlett Koelb (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA) 7. Sublime visions of Virginia: Thomas Jefferson’s Romantic mountainscapes – Alley Marie Jordan (University of Edinburgh, UK) 8. Edward Dodwell in the Peloponnese: Mountains and the classical past in nineteenth-century Mediterranean travel writing – Jason König (University of St Andrews, UK) 9. The top story: truth and sublimity in Patrick Brydone’s account of his 1770 ascent of Mt Etna – Gareth D. Williams (University of Columbia, USA) 10. Mountains of memory: a phenomenological approach to mountains in fifth-century BCE Greek tragedy – Chloe Bray (University of St Andrews, UK) 11. Mountains, identity, and the legend of King Brennus in the early modern English imaginary – Harriet Archer (University of St Andrews, UK) 12. Upland on Mont Ventoux – Peter Hansen (Worcester Polytechnic Institute, UK) Notes Bibliography Index
