Atlas of the Irish rural landscape (Irish Cultural Studies) - Hardcover

F.H.A. Aalen; Michael Stout

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1859180957 ISBN 13: 9781859180952

Publisher: Cork University Press, 1997

Synopsis

The Atlas of the Irish Rural Landscape combines many different approaches to understanding the immense ecological, educational, aesthetic and economic significance of the landscape. As with many parts of Europe that landscape is threatened and Ireland is faced with the daunting task of balancing the needs of competing rural activities. Using state of the art computer cartography, the atlas analyses the complex assemblage of features, both physical and human which gives the landscape its distinctive character. The editors and contributors have harnessed a wide range of illustrative materials including maps, paintings, photographs and remote sensing data, all reproduced in colour throughout. A substantial explanatory text vividly summarizes our growing knowledge of Irish landscape history while demonstrating its relevance in education and public policy. By analysing forces of current change the atlas suggests ways in which desirable developments can be implemented in sympathy with inherited landscape character.

About this title

About the Author

F.H.A. Aalen is professor of Geography at Trinity College, Dublin, and has served with various government bodies in Ireland regarding environmental issues, landscape preservation, and regional development.

Matthew Stout, the cartographic editor, is a lecturer at Trinity College, Dublin.

Kevin Whelan, widely regarded as Ireland's most important historical geographer, teaches at Boston College, Massachussets.

Review

Chosen as one of the Times Literary Supplement's (1997) International Books of the Year 'Lavish in form and erudite in content. There are sections on bogs and demesnes, fields and villages, mining and the destruction of antiquities. The Irish landscape, now in places under grave ecological threat, has always been a visual palimpsest of the country's turbulent history, a text to be deciphered as much as to be savoured. This beautifully illustrated essay interweaves geology, archaeology, demography, social history and a host of other disciplines, moving from tourism to the rural poor, peat to parks, vernacular rural architecture to landscape management. It demonstrates the point that, rather like literary studies, there is almost nothing that geography isn't about; but after productions as ambitious as this, literary studies had better look to its laurels.'

(Terry Eagleton Times Literary Supplement )

'Anyone interested in Ireland, especially the Irish countryside, will find this attractive volume anything from engaging to indispensable. A main purpose of the book -undertaken by two professors at Trinity College, Dublin and Whelan, Ireland's foremost historical geographer - is to be a warning about the degradation of Ireland's rural heritage. But the book, using up-to-the-minute computer cartography and drawing on a variety of disciplines, is also a vivid, colourful evocation and analysis of the physical and human features of a superb landscape.'

(The Globe and Mail )

Chosen as a Lingua Franca Breakthrough Book as one of the most illuminating recent books on Ireland 'A remarkable multidisciplinary survey of the landscape that shaped Irish folklore, literature, and visual art - focusing on the seven centuries of colonial rule. This intelligently illustrated atlas provides a social, archaeological, and geological history of the land and a polemic against Ireland's failure to protect its rural region.'

(Vera Kreilkamp Lingua Franca )

Edition details

• Publisher: Cork University Press
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1859180957
• ISBN 13: 9781859180952
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 352