Offering a comparative analysis of mountaineering literature and folklore narrative, the essay argues that the alpinist is a folklore hero par excellence insofar as the folklore hero is a figure of transcending forbidden boundaries and thus entering folklore: the alpinist pushes the limit of the impossible (according to Reinhold Messner) to conquer the realm of the useless (according to Lionel Terray), thus entering folklore. And insofar as this radical folklore status of mountaineering literature is either pre- or post-national, it also sheds light on the contradiction between mountaineering literature’s notable presence on the book market and extreme marginality in academia: academic efforts still largely focus on nation-building literature, which is a far cry from a literature of radical transgression of forbidden boundaries.
COBISS.SI-ID: 45458989
The article analyzes the literature of Paula von Preradović, including the poetry book on the Alps that she published in 1936 in Salzburg. In this way, the article intervenes in the conventional scholarly approach to mountaineering literature, that is, the study of works on mountains written by canonical writers rather than alpinists themselves. While addressing poetry on the Alps authored by a writer (rather than a climber), the article abstains from the conventional praise of the aesthetic status of the literature in question and instead critically analyzes the radical ideological dimension of this aesthetic work.
COBISS.SI-ID: 70873442
This scholarly article offers a history of Slovenian female alpinism throughout the first decade after World War II. Analyzing the economic and ideological obstacles on the path of female climbers, it argues that, ideologically, female climbers were subordinated to the collectivism of the dominant perception of sport, while, economically, they were constrained to the collectivism of the dominant notion of the household. Nonetheless, as the article demonstrates, this period in the history of Slovenian mountaineering was characterized by a number of groundbreaking climbs done by women.
COBISS.SI-ID: 71738466