Romantic Geography
In Search of the Sublime Landscape
Format:Paperback
Publisher:University of Wisconsin Press
Publishing:15th Sep '26
£14.99
This title is due to be published on 15th September, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
Yi-Fu Tuan established a global reputation for deepening the field of geography by examining its moral, universal, philosophical, and poetic potentials and implications. In Romantic Geography, he engages the wide-ranging ideas that made him one of the most influential geographers of our time. In this elegant meditation, he considers the human tendency—stronger in some cultures than in others—to veer away from the middle ground of common sense to embrace the polarized values of light and darkness, high and low, chaos and form, mind and body. In so doing, venturesome humans can find salvation in geographies that cater not so much to survival needs (or even to good, comfortable living) as to the passionate and romantic aspirations of their nature. Romantic Geography is a paean to the human spirit, which can lift us to new heights but also plunge us into the abyss.
"Tuan locates romantic geography in the heroic quests that won a deep understanding of place, the more remote and challenging the better. His vision of humanity's persistent hunger to reject familiar comfort for the new and strange is highly persuasive."—William Howarth, author of Walking with Thoreau
"Yi-Fu Tuan's examples are bracing, from Captain Nemo to the Adelie penguins. Few people can match his knowledge and ability to write reasonably and resoundingly about important themes and to link those themes to individual meaning, binding people to place."—Paul F. Starrs, author of Black Rock
“Called ‘one of the greatest living geographers,’ Tuan waxes rhapsodic about the Earth and humans’ relationship to it in this lovely little tome. He offers readers insight into famed explorers such as Ernest Shackleton and David Livingstone, reminding us that there was a time when geographers were akin to rock stars. Tuan finds poetry in geography, and readers will learn much about history and sustainability from his words.”—77 Square
ISBN: 9780299296841
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 454g
216 pages