Mountain Aesthetics in Early Modern Latin Literature

THE VIEW FROM THE MOUNTAIN (OROSKOPIA) IN GREEK AND LATIN LITERATURE

“…e.g. Calceolarus, Iter Baldi civitatis Veronae montis 927: 'Even towns and cities can be seen, which appear to the eyes of the viewers as clearly as if they were being viewed as depicted on some map (tabella) or, rather, canvas (linteo), by the hands of a Dutch painter with all his skill and charm' (and see Barton (2017) 67-113); Flaubert, Madame Bovary 3.5: Emma Bovary looks at Rouen from Saint Catherine Hills: 'Ainsi vu d'en haut, le paysage tout entier avait l'air immobile comme une peinture'; or Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, chapter 2: 'The traveller from the coast, who, after plodding northward for a score of miles over calcareous downs and corn-lands, suddenly reaches the verge of one of these escarpments, is surprised and delighted to behold, extended like a map beneath him, a country differing absolutely from that which he has passed through.' 66 The same combination is found in Lucian's Icaromenippus or the sky-man 11 (vantage point the moon): on the one hand a panoramic view ('and perching on the moon, I rested myself, looking down on the earth from on high and like Homer's Zeus, now observing the land of the horse-tending Thracians, now the land of the Mysians, and presently, if I liked, Greece, Persia and India; and from all this I got my fill of kaleidoscopic pleasure'), on the other hand reduction ('In the first place, imagine that the earth you see is very small, far less than the moon, I mean, so that when I suddenly peered down I was long uncertain where the big mountain and the great sea were, and if I had not spied the Colossus of Rhodes and the lighthouse on Pharos, I vow I shouldn't have known the earth at all'); and Verae historiae 1.26 (a looking glass on the moon allows to hear all that is said on earth and to see every city and country as if standing over it).…”

“…e.g. Calceolarus, Iter Baldi civitatis Veronae montis 927: ‘Even towns and cities can be seen, which appear to the eyes of the viewers as clearly as if they were being viewed as depicted on some map ( tabella ) or, rather, canvas ( linteo ), by the hands of a Dutch painter with all his skill and charm’ (and see Barton (2017) 67–113); Flaubert, Madame Bovary 3.5: Emma Bovary looks at Rouen from Saint Catherine Hills: ‘Ainsi vu d'en haut, le paysage tout entier avait l'air immobile comme une peinture’; or Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles , chapter 2: ‘The traveller from the coast, who, after plodding northward for a score of miles over calcareous downs and corn-lands, suddenly reaches the verge of one of these escarpments, is surprised and delighted to behold, extended like a map beneath him, a country differing absolutely from that which he has passed through.’…”