In recent years, as material culture has become more central to the study of all aspects of the ancient Mediterranean and new materialism has gained greater traction across a variety of academic disciplines, growing numbers of scholars have begun to explore how material objects and notions of materiality feature in Pindar’s work. This chapter offers an introduction to some of the main tendencies of such work. It discusses Pindar’s propensity to speak about his songs in terms normally applied to material crafts, such as weaving or carpentry; the role of tools and instruments in Pindar’s conception of composition and creation, both as applied to song and in a broader sense; the materials of the built environment; Pindar’s relationship with the contexts of his musical performances, real and imaginary; and the earth itself as a significant facet of Pindar’s conception of the material world.

Chapter 2 compares three narratives that construe landscapes as multi-scalar relational fields. In Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide (2004), Leslie Marmon Silko’s Gardens in the Dunes (1999), and A. S. Byatt’s ‘A Stone Woman’ (2003), environments are cast not as settings but as living actors of the story. I read these poetics through anthropologist Tim Ingold’s conceptualisation of landscape as a meshwork of entangled lines of life, to suggest that these fictions turn landscapes into mediators connecting human with ecosystemic scales, and biological temporality with ‘geostory’. My analysis focuses on the recurring trope of the microcosm, which allows fiction to explore large-scale ecological disruption through smaller organisms and environments. The microcosm, I argue, is a figure in tension, which acts here simultaneously as a trans-scalar viewing instrument and as a disruptor of relations between scales. I read this trope as a critical tool of ecological awareness because it foregrounds and questions scalar collapse – the epistemic projection of one scale onto another.

This chapter examines literary representations of changes in agriculture across the nineteenth century. Beginning with an overview of British farming in the early 1800s, it maps the rise of what Greg Garrard has termed “rural capitalism.” With reference to writers, including Richard Jefferies and Thomas Hardy, the piece examines how realist writing represented shifts in domestic agriculture. Moving to focus on Australia, while drawing on the work of the novelists Louisa Atkinson and Anthony Trollope, the chapter goes on to discuss Britain’s growing dependency on its colonies to provide a stable food supply. It addresses how Atkinson and Trollope were among those writers who captured the devastating changes that agriculture wreaked upon the landscape and climate, along with their warnings about the transposition of European farming methods to a radically different climate.

This chapter looks at nineteenth-century visual arts with an ecological eye. The first section considers distance: the air, haze, clouds, and atmosphere in a painting. Next, closely observed detail in images, often influenced by John Ruskin’s beliefs, is related to the importance of close attentiveness, as well as to the global networks in the study and transport of plants. It then considers the use of visual material in publicizing environmental harms and in bringing home their emotional impact, as well as considering the long-term, as yet invisible effects of climate change on landscapes. Finally, it looks at the role of visual art in providing aesthetic escapism, whatever the realities of pollution and urbanization, as with James McNeill Whistler’s misty Thames views, or with nostalgic pastoral. All sections ask what environmental futures these images contain. The chapter highlights four images: John Constable’s View on the Stour Near Dedham (1823); Albert Goodwin’s A Sunset in the Manufacturing Districts (1884); Henry Warren, The Black Country Near Bilston (1869); and George Vicat Cole, At Arundel, Sussex (1887).

The essay explores pilgrimage to the sanctuary of Dodona, in Epirus, through a phenomenological lens, aiming to reconstruct the experience of ancient pilgrims. The study highlights the significance of landscape, movement, and motivation, on the basis that Dodona’s natural features and architectural layout deeply influenced pilgrims’ perceptions. The phenomenological approach draws on landscape archaeology, analyzing human interaction with sacred spaces. The analysis examines not only motivations behind oracular activity, but also other purposes, such as attending the Naia festival, and emphasizes the interplay of visibility and movement as pilgrims approached the sanctuary. Although reconstructing individual experiences is challenging, common patterns in collective behavior, such as rituals, processions, and religious practices, offer insights into the ancient pilgrimage experience. In short, the study uses literary, epigraphic, and material evidence to discuss how Dodona’s sacred landscape shaped its visitors’ religious and emotional experiences, contributing to a broader understanding of Greek pilgrimage traditions.

An introduction to the idea of national identity, the question of its modernity, and its relation to ethnic and racial identity. The possibility that England uniquely lacked such an identity, or that the whole English population was never immersed in it, is also considered.

This chapter explores the evolving depiction of the Land of Israel in Hebrew poetry, reflecting the creation of modern Hebrew culture. It contrasts ancient expressions of longing for Zion with the transformed image of Israel as a tangible landscape. The chapter examines how poets from various Zionist immigration periods depicted their encounters with the land, ranging from messianic ecstasy to realistic sobriety. Each era produced poets who articulated their complex experiences, as exemplified by Noah Stern’s poem “Smells” (1935), which captures the blend of hallucinations, disappointments, tortures, pleasures, closeness, and alienation. Each poem is a new chapter in the ongoing narrative of encountering the land.

Chinese travel writing is a literary genre. All such works contain a coherent narrative of the physical experience of a journey through space towards an identifiable place, written in prose. In later Chinese literary history, however, most travel writing concerns real journeys. Unlike early European travel writing, with its focus on distant, alien, and exotic lands, Chinese travel writing most often describes places inside China. Almost always written in short essay or diary format, the journeys described therein often—but not always—describe trips undertaken for sightseeing purposes. As for content, it can vary considerably, depending on the geographical focus of the narrative and the author’s personal interests. For instance, we might find descriptions of famous landmarks, prominent mountains, local customs and products, and flora and fauna. The ‘literary’ component of these works refers to descriptive and/or commentarial language that is at once personal. ‘Personal’ means active engagement between the author and the place visited and described, which often inspires the traveller to employ an elevated style of language rich in lyrical content.

This chapter concentrates on the spatial presence of Palestinian doctors – the communities they served and those they did not. Villages rarely had medical facilities or doctors, and peasants had to travel to the town or city for medical services and would otherwise rely on traditional practitioners. Towns usually had missionary medical facilities, a small community of doctors (some of whom were native to the town), and one or two government medical facilities – a District Health Office, a government clinic, or a small hospital. Palestine’s large cities – Jerusalem, Haifa, and Jaffa – were characterized by a relatively large professional community, substantial Jewish presence, strong missionary presence that provided both educational and medical services, and a strong presence of the Mandate administration. The chapter places doctors on Palestine’s map and examines how medical services transformed urban relationships, as well as those between the city, the town, and the countryside.

In her chapter, Maureen O’Connor shows how feminist revivalists, in their writings and political work, experienced the Irish landscape and nature as powerful forces in the conception of “Irishness.” Revival feminists give voice and prominence to the supernatural, which has long been a component of Irish folklore. While writers such as Alice Milligan, Ethna Carbery, Eva Gore-Booth, and Hannah Lynch were critical of the dominant revival narrative – particularly when it romanticized rural Ireland and its “rustic” landscape or created gendered stereotypes about the land and Irishness generally – their work nevertheless embodied the revival insofar as it focuses on how time and political struggle are embedded in the landscape. The critique of violence and masculine power is especially important in works by latter-day revivalists such as Eilís Dillon and Edna O’Brien, who take aim at masculinist conceptions of the struggle for Irish freedom in the War of Independence and in late-twentieth century conflicts in Northern Ireland.

In order to understand how urban disaster risk changes, it is essential to understand how cities change. This chapter argues that cities are continually evolving entities whose past and present dynamics provide insights into future trends and possibilities. The chapter first reviews global trends in disaster losses, along with well-established definitions and frameworks about disaster risk. It explains why these are inadequate for understanding how a city’s disaster risk changes over time. It then proposes a simple conceptual framework, the Urban Risk Dynamics framework, to help guide empirical study of evolving disaster risk in any city. The framework is based on several premises: that local geography, or landscape, is vital to understanding urban disaster risk; that cities must be understood as economic entities; and that technological change is a key driver of urban change. The chapter then introduces and justifies the selection of the six case studies to be analyzed using the framework in Chapters 3–5.

O’Casey found solace in the home of the founder and patron, as well as the most prolific and popular playwright, of the Abbey Theatre, Lady Augusta Gregory. It might not have been expected that, during the 1920s, the owner of the grand estate of Coole Park would befriend a manual labourer who worked on the Dublin railways. But in that decade Lady Gregory and O’Casey became close acquaintances, and she proved to be one of the figures who most encouraged and developed his playwriting. This chapter examines the mentoring and friendship that Gregory provided to O’Casey, and emphasises her wider influence upon him, which has tended to be underplayed in the years after her death.

This chapter consists of an extended discussion of shamanism and related ontological concepts among the Makushi. It opens with a narrative of the author’s experiences with a Makushi shaman named Mogo since 2012 and this shaman’s later death. The chapter discusses shamanic training and practices (including charms, spells, and tobacco use), as well as how shamans form relationships with spirits. It describes methods through which Makushi shamans obtain things and abilities from spirit allies. It examines notions of ‘mastery’ and ‘ownership’ and how these relations are grounded within the local landscape. However, unlike other recent ethnographic accounts from elsewhere in Amazonia, this chapter emphasises dimensions of reciprocity in Makushi shamanic relations with non-human beings. The chapter conceptualises Makushi shamanism through the combined theoretical lenses of historical ecology and Amerindian perspectivism. The shamanic relational mode described in this chapter provides a basis for examining relations with human outsiders in subsequent chapters.