
The Wind and the Source
In the Shadow of Mont Ventoux
Allen S. Weiss(Author)
State University of New York Press
Will be published approx. on 1. June 2006
Book
Paperback/Softback
118 pages
978-0-7914-6490-8 (ISBN)
Description
Explores the role of a significant yet elusive feature of the French landscape in literature, philosophy, and art.
What does it mean to love a landscape? Why do certain authors have a predilection for specific landscapes? Why might one be fascinated by a landscape in which one would never wish to live? How does the lay of the land fashion the form of the poem? How does the wind infuse the breath? In The Wind and the Source, Allen S. Weiss explores the role of a significant yet elusive feature of the French landscape in literature, philosophy, and art: the legendary, mysterious, monolithic Mont Ventoux. This is not a book about picturesque, touristic Provence, but about the manifestation of an extreme limit of the imagination that happens to have Provence as its site, as its fantasyland. Weiss is concerned with the vicissitudes of the desire to write about a landscape, the desire to write in a landscape, and perhaps most curiously, the desire to write against a landscape. This is a book about love of the landscape, and abstraction from it; it is an account of how a mountain became a myth, and how an aesthetic and literary study became a metaphysical quest.
What does it mean to love a landscape? Why do certain authors have a predilection for specific landscapes? Why might one be fascinated by a landscape in which one would never wish to live? How does the lay of the land fashion the form of the poem? How does the wind infuse the breath? In The Wind and the Source, Allen S. Weiss explores the role of a significant yet elusive feature of the French landscape in literature, philosophy, and art: the legendary, mysterious, monolithic Mont Ventoux. This is not a book about picturesque, touristic Provence, but about the manifestation of an extreme limit of the imagination that happens to have Provence as its site, as its fantasyland. Weiss is concerned with the vicissitudes of the desire to write about a landscape, the desire to write in a landscape, and perhaps most curiously, the desire to write against a landscape. This is a book about love of the landscape, and abstraction from it; it is an account of how a mountain became a myth, and how an aesthetic and literary study became a metaphysical quest.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Albany, NY
United States
Target group
US School Grade: College Graduate Student and over
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 136 mm
Thickness: 10 mm
Weight
162 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-7914-6490-8 (9780791464908)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Allen S. Weiss teaches in the Departments of Performance Studies and Cinema Studies at New York University. He is the author of many books, including Feast and Folly: Cuisine, Intoxication, and the Poetics of the Sublime, also published by SUNY Press.
Content
List of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgments
1. Ascent
2. Disappearance
3. Metaphor
4. Breath
Notes
Select Bibliography
About the Author
Index
Preface
Acknowledgments
1. Ascent
2. Disappearance
3. Metaphor
4. Breath
Notes
Select Bibliography
About the Author
Index