Antonia Pozzi’s and Nan Shepherd’s Mountains

This article undertakes a comparative reading of Pozzi's and Shepherd's poetic and ecological relationship with mountain environments, combining affect theory and ecocriticism.The threefold structure follows a conceptual refrain borrowed from Zen philosophy.The first section, 'First There Is a Mountain', addresses sensual perceptions in the authors' poems through the lenses of new materialism, delineating the potential of an embodied knowledge of the landscape as it relates to appreciation of the dynamics of deep time, the sense of an ever-renewing life, and loving relationships with beings of all kinds.The second part, 'Then There Is No Mountain', focuses on how the autonomy of affect emerges in the works analysed as a pre-personal intensity that moves between and through human and other-than-human bodies.The final section, 'Then There Is', addresses the distinct outcomes of Pozzi's and Shepherd's affective relations with the mountain, respectively and differently influenced by Roman Catholicism and Buddhism

Affect (linguistics · Art · Geography · Linguistics · Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies · Italian Fascism and Post-war Society · Italian Literature and Culture · Philosophy