Constructing the classical past : the role of landscape in Christopher Wordsworth's Greece

Abstract

This article examines the works of Christopher Wordsworth (1807-85), who has hitherto been neglected as an important and intriguing figure in the history of travel writing on Greece. His texts, which invite readers to 'view' the country from mountain-tops and to imagine its caves and quarries filled with ancient figures, highlight the importance of landscape as a frame for studying classical reception. Wordsworth 'received' ancient Greece through its visible, modern landscape in three ways: Through a sense of the landscape as a container for memory, through the use of specific landscapes as springboard for 'flights of fancy' enabling a vivid engagement with the classical past, and as a tool for better interpreting and understanding the history and literature of the ancient Mediterranean. Christopher Wordsworth constructed a vision of ancient Greece for his readers through his description of the nineteenth-century landscape. As such he offers an important reminder to consider the role played by the embodied experience of space and place in analysing acts of classical reception.