Additional information
by Dawn Hollis (Editor), Jason König (Editor)
Throughout the longue dureéof 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 whole, the volume suggests that modern responses to mountains participate in rhetorical and experiential patterns that stretch right back to the ancient Mediterranean. It also makes the case for collaborative, cross-period research as a route both for understanding human relations with the natural world in the past, and informing them in the present.
Author Biography
Dawn Hollis is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of St Andrews, UK, working with Jason König on a Leverhulme Trust research project entitled 'Mountains in Ancient Literature and their Postclassical Reception'. Her work on the history of mountains has appeared in Alpinist and Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment.
Jason König is Professor of Greek at the University of St Andrews, UK. He has published widely on the Greek literature of the Roman empire. He is currently working on a book on mountains in the literature and culture of the ancient Mediterranean.
