The Pyrenees in the modern era : reinventions of a landscape, 1775-2012 / Martyn Lyons.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lyons, Martyn.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Pyrenees--History.

Pyrenees.

Pyrenees--Social life and customs.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (ix, 270 pages) : maps

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

[London] : Bloomsbury Academic, 2018.

System Details:

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Summary:

"This original study examines different incarnations of the Pyrenees, beginning with the assumptions of 18th-century geologists, who treated the mountains like a laboratory, and romantic 19th-century tourists and habitués of the spa resorts, who went in search of the picturesque and the sublime. The book analyses the individual visions of the heroic Pyrenees which in turn fascinated 19th-century mountaineers and the racing cyclists of the early Tour de France. Martyn Lyons also investigates the role of the Pyrenees during the Second World War as an escape route from Nazi-occupied France, when for thousands of refugees these dangerous borderlands became 'the mountains of liberty', and considers the place of the Pyrenees in recent times right up to the present day. Drawing on travel writing, press reports and scientific texts in several languages, The Pyrenees in the Modern Era explores both the French and Spanish sides of the Pyrenees to provide a nuanced historical understanding of the cultural construction of one of Europe's most prominent border regions. This book will be of great interest to scholars and students of Europe's cultural history in a transnational context."--Bloomsbury Publishing.

Contents:

Cover

Half-title

Title

Copyright

Contents

List of maps

Acknowledgements

Note on translations and transcriptions

Abbreviations

1. Introduction: The Pyrenean world

2. Romancing the stones? The Enlightenment invention of the Pyrenees

3. Visions of the picturesque: The romantic Pyrenees

4. Others among Others

5. The railway age and the coming of mass tourism, 1853-1914

6. The heroic Pyrenees: The challenge of the peaks

7. Making the nation: Cyclists and excursionists

8. Peoples of the frontier

9. Dangerous borderlands, 1936-45

10. The anthropological gaze

11. The death of Cannelle and the Green Pyrenees

12. The Pyrenees today

Notes

Select bibliography

Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781350024816

1350024813

9781350024793

1350024791

OCLC:

1016156259