The Landscapes of the Sublime 1700-1830 Classic Ground

The Landscapes of the Sublime, 1700-1830 is a major new study of the place of the 'natural sublime' in the cultural history of the eighteenth century and Romantic period. Drawing on a range of scholarship on the eighteenth century and Romantic period, on the wider category of 'the sublime' in Western and European thought, and on the praxis of literary and historical exegesis, the book generates new cultural histories of the different species of the 'natural sublime' encountered by British and European travellers and explorers, including: the Alps; the Italian volcanoes, Vesuvius and Etna; the Arctic and the Antarctic; the deserts of central and southern Africa; and the universe being revealed by the new astronomy.

Cian Duffy is Fellow of the Cambridge European Society and Reader in English Literature at St Mary's University College, UK. His research interests are in British eighteenth-century and Romantic-period literature and culture. Previous publications include Shelley and the Revolutionary Sublime and Cultures of the Sublime.

Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. 'We had hopes that pointed to the clouds': the Alps and the Poetics of Ascent
2. 'A volcano heard afar': Vesuvius, Etna, and the Poetics of Depth
3. 'The region of beauty and delight': Re-imagining the Polar Sublime
4. 'The lone and level sands': Romanticism and the Desert
5. 'My purpose was humbler, but also higher': Thomas De Quincey at the Final Frontier
Bibliography
Index