Projects / Programmes
Mountaineering Literature: Slovenia and Beyond. Intertextuality, Intersubjectivity, Internationality
| Code |
Science |
Field |
Subfield |
| 6.07.00 |
Humanities |
Literary sciences |
|
| Code |
Science |
Field |
| H000 |
Humanities |
|
| Code |
Science |
Field |
| 6.02 |
Humanities |
Languages and Literature |
mountaineering literature, mountaineering, life writing, intertextuality, intersubjectivity, internationality
Researchers (8)
Organisations (2)
Abstract
“Mountaineering Literature” is a research project that proposes a pioneering collaborative scholarly account of literature written by mountaineers. As literary scholars generally privilege thematizations of mountains by canonical authors, while non-fiction writers tend to prefer the non-scholarly dimensions of literature written by mountaineers, this literature remains a lacuna in literary studies. In literary studies, then, mountains remain mainly a theme, instead of becoming a form-giving element: the focus is on canonical writers and their thematization of mountains, not on mountaineers and their autobiographical informing of experience. This begs the question, Can the mountaineers speak? In other words, How can we theorize the very fact that a genre as established and popular as mountaineering literature has hardly been theorized? Can this have anything to do with the fact that mountaineering literature engenders not only new mountaineering literature, but also new mountaineers? Finally, what kind of community is imagined in these books about the sport that may be both more lethal and more literary than all the other sports combined?
The focus will be on the twentieth century, the period in which the single-authored book becomes the main medium of the mountaineering culture. This is the century in which the focus shifts from the Alps to the Himalaya, and from climbing Alpine peaks to climbing even more difficult peaks in the same Alpine style. If the first decades of the century are about the last problems of the Alps, these are solved and replaced with Himalayan problems by mid-century, which by the end of the century are in turn superseded by the same Himalayan problems tackled in the Alpine style. Thus, the Alps, replaced as a problem with the Himalaya, reappear there as the very style of climbing. But once the style of the climb becomes key, style no longer seems to matter in literary accounts, as these give way to documentaries and new media. The short form of early twentieth-century accounts written for prestigious Alpine journals returns by the end of the century as the short form of accounts posted on social media. Between the journal article and the Instagram story enfolds the history of the mountaineering book.
The project will look at this poorly studied genre by employing three concepts that have been studied very well: intertextuality, intersubjectivity, and internationality. Applied to all Slovenian mountaineering books of the long twentieth century and to mountaineering books in any language they explicitly refer to, the intertextual approach will unearth the rich network that emerges once we look at these books in terms of their references to each other. In the case of mountaineering literature, this intertextual approach has to be uniquely supplemented with the intersubjective one, for as mountaineering takes lives and gives back autobiographies, these autobiographies in turn give new life, as it were, inspiring surprising numbers of their readers to take up climbing themselves. Finally, this uncanny suggestiveness produces an imagined community that, unlike the kind of community imagined in canonical literature, is international rather than national.
This will demand a threefold methodology grounded respectively in theories of intertextuality, intersubjectivity, and world literature. All three approaches will have in common the use of additional tools coming from close reading, life writing studies, narratology, book history, critical globalization studies, and postcolonial studies. All three basic approaches will also interrelate in their aim to illustrate the intertextual, intersubjective, and international levels of the network of mountaineering books by using the tools of network theory.
Significance for science
When it comes to the mountains, literary studies still tend to focus on canonical writers and their thematization of mountains, and not on mountaineers and their autobiographical informing of experience. In short, writing is reduced to its theme, to the detriment of its form. The first question to be posed, then, is, How can we theorize the very fact that a genre as established as mountaineering literature has hardly been theorized? Can this have anything to do with the fact that mountaineering books engender not only new mountaineering books, but also new mountaineers? Finally, what kind of community is imagined in these books about the sport that may be both more deadly and more literary than all the other sports combined?
If these questions about mountaineering literature’s intertextuality, intersubjectivity, and internationality are posed in a way corroborated by the material, they can help literary studies establish a new research field, namely sport literature as an object of genuine scholarly knowledge. In general, this may contribute to a bypassing of the forced alternative between the generally non-scholarly approaches in non-fiction and the almost non-existing approaches in literary studies. In particular, it may conceptualize mountaineering literature as a corpus reducible neither to scholarly accounts of national literary canons nor to non-fiction accounts of national sport legends.
The Alpine Association of Slovenia, where a member of the project team already published two research monographs and a digital timeline, is the second largest body in Slovenian civil society. This situation is comparable to many other Alpine countries as well as other countries with a rich mountaineering tradition. Also, the mountaineer with the most Piolets d’Or, the so-called Oscars of high-altitude climbing, comes from Slovenia, as does the tenth, most recent recipient of the Life Achievement Piolet d’Or. This gives the project numerous possibilities to disseminate its results in such forms as exhibitions, media interviews, and public talks. All this will hopefully add to the project’s scholarly impact in all areas of literary studies related to sport literature, but also to life writing, travel writing, book history, environment, and postcolonialism.
Significance for the country
When it comes to the mountains, literary studies still tend to focus on canonical writers and their thematization of mountains, and not on mountaineers and their autobiographical informing of experience. In short, writing is reduced to its theme, to the detriment of its form. The first question to be posed, then, is, How can we theorize the very fact that a genre as established as mountaineering literature has hardly been theorized? Can this have anything to do with the fact that mountaineering books engender not only new mountaineering books, but also new mountaineers? Finally, what kind of community is imagined in these books about the sport that may be both more deadly and more literary than all the other sports combined?
If these questions about mountaineering literature’s intertextuality, intersubjectivity, and internationality are posed in a way corroborated by the material, they can help literary studies establish a new research field, namely sport literature as an object of genuine scholarly knowledge. In general, this may contribute to a bypassing of the forced alternative between the generally non-scholarly approaches in non-fiction and the almost non-existing approaches in literary studies. In particular, it may conceptualize mountaineering literature as a corpus reducible neither to scholarly accounts of national literary canons nor to non-fiction accounts of national sport legends.
The Alpine Association of Slovenia, where a member of the project team already published two research monographs and a digital timeline, is the second largest body in Slovenian civil society. This situation is comparable to many other Alpine countries as well as other countries with a rich mountaineering tradition. Also, the mountaineer with the most Piolets d’Or, the so-called Oscars of high-altitude climbing, comes from Slovenia, as does the tenth, most recent recipient of the Life Achievement Piolet d’Or. This gives the project numerous possibilities to disseminate its results in such forms as exhibitions, media interviews, and public talks. All this will hopefully add to the project’s scholarly impact in all areas of literary studies related to sport literature, but also to life writing, travel writing, book history, environment, and postcolonialism.
Most important scientific results
Interim report
Most important socioeconomically and culturally relevant results
