The Pyrenees in the Modern Era: Reinventions of a Landscape, 1775-2012

Description

This original study examines different incarnations of the Pyrenees, beginning with the assumptions of 18th-century geologists, who treated the mountains like a laboratory, and romantic 19th-century tourists and habitues of the spa resorts, who went in search of the picturesque and the sublime. The book analyses the individual visions of the heroic Pyrenees which in turn fascinated 19th-century mountaineers and the racing cyclists of the early Tour de France. Martyn Lyons also investigates the role of the Pyrenees during the Second World War as an escape route from Nazi-occupied France, when for thousands of refugees these dangerous borderlands became 'the mountains of liberty', and considers the place of the Pyrenees in recent times right up to the present day. Drawing on travel writing, press reports and scientific texts in several languages, The Pyrenees in the Modern Era explores both the French and Spanish sides of the Pyrenees to provide a nuanced historical understanding of the cultural construction of one of Europe's most prominent border regions. This book will be of great interest to scholars and students of Europe's cultural history in a transnational context.

Martyn Lyons is Emeritus Professor of History and European Studies at the University of New South Wales, Australia. He is the author of The Writing Culture of Ordinary People in Europe (2012), Books: A Living History (2011) and Post-Revolutionary Europe, 1815-1856 (2006), among other works on revolutionary and Napoleonic France, and on the history of reading practices.

If [Lyons'] chapters offer a versatile, stand-alone quality, they also link together in a smooth narrative and consistent analytical framework. A resounding strength of this book is the breadth of sources that inform it ... [An] elegant, sophisticated rendition of the Pyrenees' modern cultural history. * Canadian Journal of History * Lyons provides a kaleidoscopic view of the Pyrenean borderlands ... This book is a welcome addition to the existing literature on the Pyrenees; it will be of interest to both a scholarly and a general readership. * H-France * This comprehensive volume examines the Pyrenees as social construct through varied lenses of the modern world that move far beyond the mountains' geographic presence, populations, and ecologies ... [This] work powerfully reminds us of the changing human beliefs and actions that not only construct environments but also alter, neglect, and damage complex ecological systems. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. * CHOICE * Lyons admirably demonstrates how frontiers and borderlands are flexible, malleable, constructed and, at times, real things ... [He] is very convincing in demonstrating the variety of different constructions the landscape has been subject to, and how such constructions reflect the larger historical period they emerged from and the larger concerns of outsiders and tourists. * EuropeNow * A total history of the Pyrenees. Martyn Lyons is an engaging expert guide, leading us through scientists, Romantic travel-writers, peasant customs, refugees, mountaineers, ecologists and anthropologists. * Sharif Gemie, Professor of Modern and Contemporary History, University of South Wales, UK * Martyn Lyons takes the reader on a fascinating journey through Pyrenean landscapes across two and a half centuries. Drawing upon the writings of a wide range of observers, he makes a very welcome, highly readable contribution to our understanding of a culturally and linguistically diverse borderland. * Sandra Ott, Associate Professor, University of Nevada, Reno, USA *