The Draw of the Alps : Alpine Summits and Borderlands in Modern German-Speaking Culture / edited by Richard McClelland.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

McClelland, Richard, author.

Series:

Interdisciplinary German cultural studies ; Volume 36.

Interdisciplinary German Cultural Studies ; Volume 36

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Regional planning--Alps Region.

Regional planning.

Sustainable development--Alps Region.

Sustainable development.

Alps Region--Politics and government--21st century.

Alps Region.

Alps Region--Civilization--21st century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (276 pages)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Berlin, Germany : Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston, [2023]

Summary:

The Alps have exerted a hold over the German cultural imagination throughout the modern period, enthralling writers, artists, philosophers, scientists, and tourists alike. The Draw of the Alps interrogates the dynamics of this fascination. Though philosophical and aesthetic responses to Alpine space have shifted over time, the Alps continue to captivate at an individual and collective level. This has resulted in myriad cultural engagements with Alpine space, as this interdisciplinary volume attests. Literature, photography, and philosophy continue to engage with the Alps as a place in which humans pursue their cognitive and aesthetic limits. At the same time, individuals engage physically with the alpine environment, whether as visitors through the well-established leisure industry, as enthusiasts of extreme sports, or as residents who feel the acute end of social and environmental change. Taking a transnational view of Alpine space, the volume demonstrates that the Alps are not geographically peripheral to the nation-state but are a vibrant locus of modern cultural production. As The Draw of the Alps attests, the Alps are nothing less than a crucible in which understandings of what it means to be human have been forged.

Contents:

Intro

Contents

The Draw of the Alps

Part 1: Constructing the Alps

Connecting Transnationalization and the Mnemotope of "the Pariah": The Alps as Border and Contact Zone in Ferdinand von Saar's Die Steinklopfer (The Stone Breakers, 1873)

Setting the Scene: Tourist Infrastructure, Landscape, and Literature in the Swiss Alps from the 1880s to 1930s

Constructing the Alps: Perspectives on the Perception of the Alps by the Tyrolean Anti-Transit Movement

Shifting Perspectives: Alpine Scenarios in the Work Complex Nach der Natur (Beyond Nature) by Austrian Architectural Photographer Margherita Spiluttini

Part 2: Desire and the Alps

After the Mountain Sublime: Erosion and Catastrophe in Max Frisch's Der Mensch erscheint im Holozän (Man in the Holocene, 1979)

God da Tamangur: An Alpine Landscape of Longing and Loss

Walking Away, Going Astray in Alpine Spaces: Homeric Wanderings in Peter Stamm's Weit über das Land (To the Back of Beyond, 2016)

Part 3: Into the Alps

Crevasses and Magic Mountains: Alpine Discourse in Vicki Baum's Marion lebt (Marion Alive, 1942)

Dream, Nightmare and Alpine Fortifications in Christian Kracht's Alternate History Novel Ich werde hier sein im Sonnenschein und im Schatten (2008)

More than Romantic Scenery: The Contested Alpine Landscape in Raphaela Edelbauer's Das flüssige Land (The Liquid Land, 2019)

Part 4: Boundaries and the Alps

The Alps as a Site of Boundary Suspension? Wilhelmine von Hillern's Die Geier-Wally (The Vulture Maiden, 1875) in Deutsche Rundschau

At the Limit: Edgework, Ethics and Environment in Paul Preuss' Theory and Practice of Climbing

Bibliography

About the Authors

Index.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

3-11-115053-4