1st Edition
Mountain Aesthetics in Early Modern Latin Literature
In the late Renaissance and Early Modern period, man’s relationship to nature changed dramatically. An important part of this change occurred in the way that beauty was perceived in the natural world and in the particular features which became privileged objects of aesthetic gratification. This study explores the shift in aesthetic attitude towards the mountain that took place between 1450 and 1750. Over the course of these 300 years the mountain transformed from a fearful and ugly place to one of beauty and splendor. Accepted scholarly opinion claims that this change took place in the vernacular literature of the early and mid-18th century. Based on previously unknown and unstudied material, this volume now contends that it took place earlier in the Latin literature of the late Renaissance and Early Modern period. The aesthetic attitude shift towards the mountain had its catalysts in two broad spheres: the development of an idea of ‘landscape’ in the geographical and artistic traditions of the 16th century on the one hand, and the increasing amount of scientific and theological investigation dedicated to the mountain on the other, reaching a pinnacle in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. The new Latin evidence for the change in aesthetic attitude towards the mountain unearthed in the course of this study brings material to light which is relevant for the current philosophical debate in environmental aesthetics. The book’s concluding chapter shows how understanding the processes that produced the late Renaissance and Early Modern shift in aesthetic attitude towards the mountain can reveal important information about the modern aesthetic appreciation of nature. Alongside a standard bibliography of primary literature, this volume also offers an extended annotated bibliography of further Latin texts on the mountains from the Renaissance and Early Modern period. This critical bibliography is the first of its kind and constitutes an essential tool for further study in the field.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
List of Abbreviations
Acknowledgements
Note on Neo-Latin Texts
Introduction
1. The Mountain in Latin: Literary Heritage
Josias Simmler’s De Alpibus Commentarius (1574)
The Mountain in Classical Literature
The Mountain in Classical Literature: Concluding Remarks
The Mountains of the Bible
The Mountains of the Bible: Concluding Remarks
2. Gaeographia, Prospectus, Pictura
Gessner Frames the Mountain
The Mountain in Chorography
Geography’s Rebirth in Germania
Prospectus and the Mountain in Text
Early Landscape Art and the Mountain
Latin and the Rise of the Landscape Genre
Geography and Landscape Art come together
Pliny Concludes: A View from Tuscany
3. Theologia et Philosophia Naturalis
The Disciplines and their Relationship
Natural Philosophy, Mountains of the Mind and Aesthetics
The Mountains and their Origins—l’état de question in 1561
Mountains in Genesis and Berhardus Varenius
A Smooth Primaeval Earth—Josephus Blancanus
Aesthetics of Nature in Theology: Commentaries on Genesis
The ‘Burnet Controversy’ and Mountain Aesthetics in Natural Philosophy
The ‘World Makers’, John Woodward and Dissertationes de Montibus
Scheuchzer’s Itinera Alpina and the Changed Mountain Aesthetic
4. Aesthetics of Nature: The Case of the Mountain Mentality Change
The Appreciation of Nature in Modern Philosophical Aesthetics—An Overview
Current Positions in the Aesthetics of Nature
The Natural Environmental Model
The Case of the Mountain Mentality Change
Methodological Considerations
Theism and Positive Aesthetics
The Role of Natural Science in Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature
Landscape and the Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature
Steno and Leonardo: the Tuscan Hills
Conclusions
Appendix
Annotated Bibliography
Preamble
Annotated List
Bibliography
Index
Biography
William M. Barton is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Neo-Latin Studies, Austria.