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Weyerhaeuser Environmental Classics
Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory: The Development of the Aesthetics of the Infinite
To English poets and writers of the seventeenth century, as to their predecessors, mountains were ugly protuberances which disfigured nature and threatened the symmetry of earth; they were symbols God's wrath. Yet, less than two centuries later the romantic poets sang in praise of mountain splendor, of glorious heights that stirred their souls to divine ecstasy. In this very readable and fascinating study, Marjorie Hope Nicolson considers the intellectual renaissance at the close of the seventeenth century that caused the shift from mountain gloom to mountain glory. She examines various writers from the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries and traces both the causes and the process of this drastic change in perception.
432 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1997
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April 20, 2025actually did skim it all the way through bc I didn't want to start writing my paper. decently easy read, chock-full of old poets and "physico-theologians" as Nicolson calls them, fascinating scholarship on a topic I've never thought about before this semester.
From Art—far less important now than it had been for centuries—through grand Nature in this world, through cosmic Space, eighteenth-century imagination rose to the true Vast, the Infinite. From the Infinite, through the reaches of space discovered by the new astronomy, sublimity descended to exalt and ennoble ‘the wide Sea and the Mountains of the Earth.’ Such was the process of the ‘Aesthetics of the Infinite.’
From Art—far less important now than it had been for centuries—through grand Nature in this world, through cosmic Space, eighteenth-century imagination rose to the true Vast, the Infinite. From the Infinite, through the reaches of space discovered by the new astronomy, sublimity descended to exalt and ennoble ‘the wide Sea and the Mountains of the Earth.’ Such was the process of the ‘Aesthetics of the Infinite.’
October 6, 2012
This book has been on my radar for some years, but I put it off because of its age. I was wrong to do so! Anyone interested in the various arts, media, tourism, and athletic activities surrounding mountains should read this. It is a lesson in theology, geology, philosophy, literature, and art. Without the unsettling influence of Enlightenment science and its challenges to Christian conceptions of the providence and fate of the earth, mountains would not have been transmuted from "warts and wens" to august and majestic. The depth of knowledge the researcher has on the subject of 17th century English writers really allows us to see the fissures that allowed mountains to become sublime. I would also like to know how these ideas entered Continental Europe, as this book is entirely Anglo-centric. What it diffusion, simultaneous adoption (Descartes does loom large in this text), or is it an error to pose this question? The author does argue for an English native romanticism that springs from the Isle's lack of Alpine landscapes.
October 12, 2017
I grabbed this book because it raised a question I had not known existed before. Apparently in English humanities the appearance of mountains, and grand nature in general, was not really a positive until the Romantic period. Taking its name more from ruins than from any clear knowledge of the ancient world, the Romantics began to find pleasure in topics once too grim to mention - the wild, the graveyard, the phantasm, and the fancy... Apparently there was a change in attitudes of writers towards mountains that perfectly epitomizes the individuality that the Romantics memorialized into their culture. Before them, people mentioned mountains as ominous, dreaded wilderness, the unapproachable, and hardly the inspiration icons they are to us.
This book was written in the early 50s, a time when a student of poetry knew a whole lot about a lot fewer poets, and shared that knowledge with most of their peers. Something quite different today... more poets means more diversity, more isolation, and more specialities, and a lot less 'common' knowledge. The change in the reputation of mountains is an interesting precursory metaphor. As the individual began to take center stage in the cosmic order, so too the praises for remoteness, and the significance of one's own view becomes more celebrated than the discussion of what geography was more suitable for the soul.
It was a fast read, I skimmed mostly, with lots of quotes from classic poets, but probably too stuffy for those who don't have any questions about whether nature is a source of inspiration or degradation in their life. I found the change fascinating, and that is one of the author's points... that we take our era's perspective as a given, and that reveals profound bias and blindspots that rule our 'modern' lives as much now as it did those living of the past... an apt topic for a woman in academia in the 1950s I'd venture to guess.
It makes it clear that this change in attitude was a cultural fact of English literature... if only because in the North before things like plastic, the mountains could easily kill you. It acknowledges that other cultures, in warmer climes, made their way to the tops of mountains in order to commune, and makes a fascinating point that Christian thought seems to have strongly introduced a disenchantment with mountains. Even though it is the partial offshoot of a culture that had its own holy mountain, mountains became purely virtualized metaphor for problems in the development of the new faith, as emblems of struggle and arrogance, but never a desirable place to admire or have a spiritual experience... not until well after the earliest Renaissance weirdos began to enter the record, willing to admit they are moved by taking the airs for leisure.
In any case, the book makes it perfectly clear that culture is constantly changing even when it feels it is standing still, that the intellectual present is nothing like the past, even if it hangs on that way via imagination, like a sloth hangs onto a tree branch... and has made strides towards a better appreciation of life, a welcome perspective at any time.
This book was written in the early 50s, a time when a student of poetry knew a whole lot about a lot fewer poets, and shared that knowledge with most of their peers. Something quite different today... more poets means more diversity, more isolation, and more specialities, and a lot less 'common' knowledge. The change in the reputation of mountains is an interesting precursory metaphor. As the individual began to take center stage in the cosmic order, so too the praises for remoteness, and the significance of one's own view becomes more celebrated than the discussion of what geography was more suitable for the soul.
It was a fast read, I skimmed mostly, with lots of quotes from classic poets, but probably too stuffy for those who don't have any questions about whether nature is a source of inspiration or degradation in their life. I found the change fascinating, and that is one of the author's points... that we take our era's perspective as a given, and that reveals profound bias and blindspots that rule our 'modern' lives as much now as it did those living of the past... an apt topic for a woman in academia in the 1950s I'd venture to guess.
It makes it clear that this change in attitude was a cultural fact of English literature... if only because in the North before things like plastic, the mountains could easily kill you. It acknowledges that other cultures, in warmer climes, made their way to the tops of mountains in order to commune, and makes a fascinating point that Christian thought seems to have strongly introduced a disenchantment with mountains. Even though it is the partial offshoot of a culture that had its own holy mountain, mountains became purely virtualized metaphor for problems in the development of the new faith, as emblems of struggle and arrogance, but never a desirable place to admire or have a spiritual experience... not until well after the earliest Renaissance weirdos began to enter the record, willing to admit they are moved by taking the airs for leisure.
In any case, the book makes it perfectly clear that culture is constantly changing even when it feels it is standing still, that the intellectual present is nothing like the past, even if it hangs on that way via imagination, like a sloth hangs onto a tree branch... and has made strides towards a better appreciation of life, a welcome perspective at any time.
August 25, 2024
Originally published in 1959, Marjorie Hope Nicolson's Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory was the first comprehensive effort to track changes in attitudes toward mountains in English--the country, not the language--literature. Nicolson argued, on the basis of her analysis of work starting in the sixteenth century, that mountains were regarded as frightening and ruinous territories, best avoided, until a sea-change occurred starting in the seventeenth century, in which mountains came instead to be see as sublime and beautiful, well worth exploring. Central to this transformation was the argument among intellectuals whether God had created the Earth as a smooth sphere, which the Flood transformed into the craggy, uneven place we inhabit, or whether mountains were part of God's original design. Nicolson lays considerable emphasis on Thomas Burnet's The Sacred Theory of the Earth (1681). Burnet plumped for the theory of a featureless original Earth. His book provoked vigorous debate, and helped usher in just the opposite of his position--that mountains were always there. That helped strip them of the suspicion of evil, and set one of the conditions for the emergence of the Romantic sublime.
Nicholson has come in for lots of criticism. For example, Janice Hewlett Koelb has rebuked her for ignoring much earlier positive assessments of mountains, going back to Greek and Roman antiquity, and for misreading Burnet ("'This Most Beautiful and Adorn'd World': Nicholson' Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory Reconsidered," Literature and the Environment 16 [2009] 443-468).
Koelb is right about what Nicholson missed, but--it seems to me--much of the critique is beside the point: Nicholson wasn't out to write a comprehensive history of views about mountains, but rather a study strictly confined to British literature of certain genres between the sixteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Her treatment of the texts she engages seems to me to hold up quite well, if, in any case, she might be mildly rebuked for a certain narrowness, that may in part have colored her conclusions. No matter--Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory remains a seminal text, still well worth reading.
Nicholson has come in for lots of criticism. For example, Janice Hewlett Koelb has rebuked her for ignoring much earlier positive assessments of mountains, going back to Greek and Roman antiquity, and for misreading Burnet ("'This Most Beautiful and Adorn'd World': Nicholson' Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory Reconsidered," Literature and the Environment 16 [2009] 443-468).
Koelb is right about what Nicholson missed, but--it seems to me--much of the critique is beside the point: Nicholson wasn't out to write a comprehensive history of views about mountains, but rather a study strictly confined to British literature of certain genres between the sixteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Her treatment of the texts she engages seems to me to hold up quite well, if, in any case, she might be mildly rebuked for a certain narrowness, that may in part have colored her conclusions. No matter--Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory remains a seminal text, still well worth reading.
October 22, 2019
Who knew there was so much debate around mountains and the way they look... The book is thorough and even if the information in it is generally interesting, I was bored out of my mind reading it.
November 19, 2021
What struck me most about Robert Macfarlane's Mountains of the Mind was his discussion of how European culture had to learn to appreciate mountains. Before German and English Romanticism, mountains were things to be feared and avoided.
Marjorie Hope Nicolson's Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory traces the intellectual roots of this radical about-turn. She is thorough. She begins with the religious and scriptural explanations for the existence of mountains, moves through the Reformation, through the revolutions wrought by Descartes, Newton, and others, and zeroes in on how the 18th-century writings of Addison, Shaftesbury, and Dennis came to shape the ideas of the great Romantic poets of the English language.
In other words, this book is about more than just mountains. It is primarily about the development of the idea of The Sublime in English aesthetics. (Strangely, Edmund Burke is largely absent from her discussion).
I'm glad I read this book. I am also glad that I'm finished. She is almost too fastidious and too focused. I would have much rather have read about how The Sublime in nature differs from magic and the sinister in folklore...
Marjorie Hope Nicolson's Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory traces the intellectual roots of this radical about-turn. She is thorough. She begins with the religious and scriptural explanations for the existence of mountains, moves through the Reformation, through the revolutions wrought by Descartes, Newton, and others, and zeroes in on how the 18th-century writings of Addison, Shaftesbury, and Dennis came to shape the ideas of the great Romantic poets of the English language.
In other words, this book is about more than just mountains. It is primarily about the development of the idea of The Sublime in English aesthetics. (Strangely, Edmund Burke is largely absent from her discussion).
I'm glad I read this book. I am also glad that I'm finished. She is almost too fastidious and too focused. I would have much rather have read about how The Sublime in nature differs from magic and the sinister in folklore...
March 7, 2010
A bit dated, but nevertheless probably the best text still to discuss the changing complexities of mountains in literature across the long eighteenth-century. As you may guess, from Gloom to Glory...
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