McNee The New Mountaineer in Late Victorian Britain

Materiality, Modernity, and the Haptic Sublime
1. Auflage 2016
ISBN: 978-3-319-33440-0
Verlag: Springer International Publishing
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: Wasserzeichen (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 257 Seiten, eBook

Reihe: Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture

This book is about the rise of a new ethos in British mountaineering during the late nineteenth century. It traces how British attitudes to mountains were transformed by developments both within the new sport of mountaineering and in the wider fin-de-siècle culture. The emergence of the new genre of mountaineering literature, which helped to create a self-conscious community of climbers with broadly shared values, coincided with a range of cultural and scientific trends that also influenced the direction of mountaineering. The author discusses the growing preoccupation with the physical basis of aesthetic sensations, and with physicality and materiality in general; the new interest in the physiology of effort and fatigue; and the characteristically Victorian drive to enumerate, codify, and classify. Examining a wide range of texts, from memoirs and climbing club journals to hotel visitors’ books, he argues that the figure known as the ‘New Mountaineer’ was seen to embody a distinctly modern approach to mountain climbing and mountain aesthetics.

Zielgruppe

Research

Autoren/Hrsg.

McNee, Alan

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction.- 1. The Rise of the New Mountaineer.- 2. Resisting the New Mountaineer.- 3. The Climbing Body.- 4. The Haptic Sublime.- 5. ‘Trippers’ and the New Mountain Landscape.- Conclusion.- Glossary.- Bibliography.- Index.

Über Autor(innen)

Alan McNee is a former journalist. He completed his PhD at Birkbeck, University of London in 2013. His first book was a biography of the Victorian journalist, showman, and traveller, Albert Smith.