Watching Vesuvius : a history of science and culture in early modern Italy / Sean Cocco.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cocco, Sean.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Volcanism--Social aspects--Italy--Naples.

Volcanism.

Volcanism--Italy--Naples--Influence.

Vesuvius (Italy)--History--17th century.

Vesuvius (Italy).

Vesuvius (Italy)--Eruption, 1631.

Vesuvius (Italy)--Research--Italy--History.

Naples (Italy)--Intellectual life--17th century.

Naples (Italy).

Naples (Italy)--History--1503-1734.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (335 p.)

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2012.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Mount Vesuvius has been famous ever since its eruption in 79 CE, when it destroyed and buried the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. But less well-known is the role it played in the science and culture of early modern Italy, as Sean Cocco reveals in this ambitious and wide-ranging study. Humanists began to make pilgrimages to Vesuvius during the early Renaissance to experience its beauty and study its history, but a new tradition of observation emerged in 1631 with the first great eruption of the modern period. Seeking to understand the volcano's place in the larger system of nature, Neapolitans flocked to Vesuvius to examine volcanic phenomena and to collect floral and mineral specimens from the mountainside. In Watching Vesuvius, Cocco argues that this investigation and engagement with Vesuvius was paramount to the development of modern volcanology. He then situates the native experience of Vesuvius in a larger intellectual, cultural, and political context and explains how later eighteenth-century representations of Naples-of its climate and character-grew out of this tradition of natural history. Painting a rich and detailed portrait of Vesuvius and those living in its shadow, Cocco returns the historic volcano to its place in a broader European culture of science, travel, and appreciation of the natural world.

Contents:

Introduction: Vesuvius in the view South

Approaches: humanists, naturalists, and Vesuvius in the late Renaissance

Marvelous excesses: the eruption of 1631

Histories of ignition: from historia to causa

Contesting Vesuvius: discordant meanings in the context of revolt

On the face of this earth: Vesuvius and its kind

Watching and philosophizing: from controversy to cosmopolitanism

Formed by explosion: geology in the Neapolitan picturesque

Conclusion: returns to the past.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

9781283833691

1283833697

9780226923734

0226923738

OCLC:

820335562