The Unifying Aspects of Cultures

SECTION:

The Mountain and Cultural Aesthetic

C. W.R. D. Moseley (Hughes Hall, University of Cambridge)
'Get thee up into an high mountain': The English Lake District as virtual landscape

This paper will discuss two topographical works: Wordsworth's Guide to the Lakes which some regard as the best guidebook to that region of England ever written, and the extraordinary series of guidebooks to that area written and drawn from the 1950s onwards by Alfred Wainwright. Wordsworth's book may be admired less, perhaps, for its accuracy of detail than for its anticipation - even creation - of an attitude to physical presence in (rather than mere observation of) scenery . It is that attitude which is argued eventually to demand a new form of writing and utterance, best represented in Wainwright's meticulous MSS, reproduced exactly as books, which describe routes of ascent, traverse and descent for each of the hills in turn. Wainwright's intimate style creates a relationship with his individual reader premised on them sharing the same 'no-nonsense', democratic, anti-authority values. Wainwright's quirks are no more hidden than they would be in conversation, and are literally inscribed onto the landscape he depicts.

THE UNIFYING ASPECTS OF CULTURES