Contents
PREFACE
- Paces and Pages: Ecocritical Narrative Scholarship and the Italian Ecocultural Debt
INTRODUCTION
- Assisi “Pilgrims” and Pilgrims
- Environmental History of Italy 101
CHAPTER 1
- Paces: To Bibbiena
- Pages: Early Italian Impressions of Nature
CHAPTER 2
- Paces: To Santuario di La Verna
- Pages: (R)Evolutionary Science
CHAPTER 3
- Paces: On the Wounded Mountain
- Pages: Nature Nurtured and Neutered
CHAPTER 4
- Paces: To Eremo di Cerbaiolo
- Pages: Cultivated Nature
CHAPTER 5
- Paces: To Sansepolcro
- Pages: Wildness and Stewardship
CHAPTER 6
- Paces: To Città di Costello
- Pages: Designed Villas and Landscapes
CHAPTER 7
- Paces: To Pietralunga
- Pages: Designed Waterscapes and Ecologies
CHAPTER 8
- Paces: To Gubbio
- Pages: Landscape Reparation
CHAPTER 9
- Paces: To Abbazia di Vallingegno
- Pages: Systemic Reclamation Design
CHAPTER 10
- Paces: To Assisi
- Pages: Regenerative Landscape Design
CHAPTER 11
- Paces: Beside the Tortured River
- Pages: Contemporary Italian Environmental Criticism, Planning, and Science
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Environmental Scholars Accompanying the Pilgrimage Walk
The Mountains of Saint Francis: Discovering the Geologic Events that Shaped Our Earth (2009)
A Critique for Ecology (1991)
“Homage to Santa Rosalia or Why are There so Many Kinds of Animals?”
(1959 paper in)
“The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adptationist Programme” (1979 paper in)
Songbirds, Truffles, and Wolves: An American Naturalist in Italy (1993)
Nature (1836)
Italian Villas and Their Gardens (1904)
Man and Nature: Or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action (1864)
The Wildest Place on Earth: Italian Gardens and the Invention of Wilderness (2001)
Pilgrimage to Vallombrosa: From Vermont to Italy in the Footsteps of George Perkins Marsh (2006)
The Palladian Landscape: Geographical Change and its Cultural Representations in Sixteenth-Century Italy (1993)
A Framework for Geodesign: Changing Geography by Design (2012)
The Waters of Rome: Aqueducts, Fountains, and the Birth of the Baroque City (2011)
“Urban Water History and Design” (2000 talk from a Harvard GSD conference)
Earth Repair: A Transatlantic History of Environmental Restoration (2005)
Systemic Design Can Change the World (2009)
Handbook of Regenerative Landscape Design (2008)
Environmental History of Italy
Early Italian Impressions of Nature
And the following scientific papers:
Vito Volterra: “Fluctuations in the Abundance of a Species considered Mathematically”
Rosario Mosello et al.: “Emilio Corti’s ‘Limnofauna Italica’ and the Origins of Limnology in Italy in Comparison with the Current Scientific Scenario”
Marina Manca and Roberto Bertoni: “Seventy Five Years of Limnology at the Istituto Italiano di Idrobiologica in Pallanza”
Italian Environmental Criticism, Planning & Science
And the following scientific papers:
Antonio Puseddu et al.: “Advances in limnological and oceanographic research in Italy: The history of the Italian Association of Limnology and Oceanography (AIOL)”
Nico Salmaso and Rosario Mosello: “Limnological research in the deep southern subalpine lakes: Synthesis, directions and perspectives”
Chapter Topics
PREFACE
Paces and Pages: Ecocritical Narrative Scholarship and the Italian Ecocultural Debt
- Past and personal reasons for undertaking a/the pilgrimage
- Historiography of modern guidebooks on the Franciscan Way
- Relationship of walking to writing creativity
- Long-distance walks and the emerging discipline of experiential narrative scholarship
- Problems with ecocriticism’s lack of interdisciplinarity with regard to science, and the confusion of humanities scholars between ‘environment’ and ‘ecology’
- Trans-Atlantic differences in perspectives on the role of humans in nature
- Importance of the 19th-century Grand Tour and the ‘Italian debt’ on fostering American letters and arts
- Description of the present integration of ‘paces’ and ‘pages’ traversed during the pilgrimage to Assisi
INTRODUCTION
Assisi “Pilgrims” and Pilgrims
- Walking as essential to Francis’ ministry and to the practice of pilgrimage
- Early 20th-century pilgrims walking to Assisi contrasted with modern religious tourists masquerading as bona fide ‘pilgrims’
Environmental History of Italy 101
- Moving beyond perceptions of Italian landscapes based on aesthetic beauty to consideration of their vulnerability to human impacts and natural disturbance
- Perspectives on villa estates, history of environmental problems, hydrological manipulations, concepts of natural religion, and history of protecting natural areas
- Recognition of the artificiality of Italian landscapes in reflecting millennia of human alteration
- Management of rural Italian social-ecological systems
- Italy’s relationship with its endemic brown bear as a sad lesson in the shortcomings of habitat preservation and wildlife conservation
- Sorry state of Venice due to local venality and mismanagement
- Celebrated history of Italian freshwater (limnological) research
CHAPTER 1
Pages: Early Italian Impressions of Nature
- Gradual naturalization of environmental phenomena during Classical Antiquity
- Long history of environmental damage to Mediterranean landscapes
- Classical idea concerning the resilience of nature to perturbation
- Early concepts of the regulatory laws of Nature
- Management of agrarian landscapes in ancient SPQR
- Belief in the need for humans to intercede in order to keep nature on track
- Medieval ideas about the power of nature and the role of the Creator in providing for humans
- Interpretations of nature by Italian poets and writers
- Renaissance natural science, the order of life, and environmental manipulations for prosperity or warfare
- Birth of the discipline of quantitative ecology
- Foundational role of Italian limnologists in the scientific understanding of lakes
CHAPTER 2
Pages: (R)Evolutionary Science
- Role of Italians in the birth of the science of geology
- Comet impact and the mass extinction of the dinosaurs
- Concept of the ecological niche and competition as regulator of biodiversity
- Function of adaptation in biological evolution
- Problems of tautology in the science of ecology
CHAPTER 3
Pages: Nature Nurtured and Neutered
- Importance of ethnobotany in Italian ecocultural history
- Italy’s woeful role in wilderness and wildlife protection
CHAPTER 4
Pages: Cultivated Nature
- Transcendentalism in eco-theology
- Artistic manipulation of nature in the formal design of Italian gardens
- History of Italian environmental degradation as a cautionary tale for the Americas
CHAPTER 5
Pages: Wildness and Stewardship
- Championing wildness over wilderness
- Influence of Italian gardens on the American concept of nature protection
- Lessons from Italy for implementing environmental sustainability
CHAPTER 6
Pages: Designed Villas and Landscapes
- Villa estates as extensions of landscapes
- Agriculture as a harmonious, quasi-religious human-nature ideal
- Problems with landscape architecture education
- Use of geo-spatial data in the holistic planning of social-ecological landscapes
CHAPTER 7
Pages: Designed Waterscapes and Ecologies
- Drinking-water infrastructure in the socio-political urban planning of Rome
- Ecological design and the use of stormwater management in creating public space
CHAPTER 8
Pages: Landscape Reparation
- Differences between Italian and American mindsets concerning ecological restoration and the role of humans in degrading or salvaging nature
CHAPTER 9
Pages: Systemic Reclamation Design
- Problems with the profession of landscape architecture not focusing on big issues of broad societal importance
- Misguided emphasis in environmental restoration of trying to replicate past conditions rather than in directing the development of future landscapes
CHAPTER 10
Pages: Regenerative Landscape Design
- Need for environmental restoration to consider people as part of the overall process of landscape regeneration
CHAPTER 11
Pages: Contemporary Italian Environmental Criticism, Planning, and Science
- Moving beyond the concept of Italian nature as an idealized bucolic landscape to the reality of its environmental fragility and susceptibility to criminal corruption and political mismanagement
- Role of Italian fiction and film in showcasing this change
- Expansion of landscape ecology to be more inclusive of human actions and aspirations
- Approaches to land-use planning based on large-scale impact assessments linking biodiversity conservation to poverty and ecosystem services
- Understanding the historic and future challenges to freshwater ecosystems
Chapter Landmarks
The book contains the most informative eighty-three photos (shown in B&W therein) that characterize the pilgrimage walk from the wounded mountain of La Verna to the tortured river near Assisi. To these can be added the following supplemental ones, arranged chronologically and identified within the book’s textual descriptions for each day’s walk.
Clicking on photos will enlarge them
CHAPTER 1
Paces: To Bibbiena
CHAPTER 3
Paces: On the Wounded Mountain
CHAPTER 2
Paces: To Santuario di La Verna
CHAPTER 4
Paces: To Eremo di Cerbaiolo
CHAPTER 5
Paces: To Sansepolcro
CHAPTER 6
Paces: To Città di Costello
CHAPTER 7
Paces: To Pietralunga
CHAPTER 8
Paces: To Gubbio
CHAPTER 9
Paces: To Abbazia di Vallingegno
CHAPTER 10
Paces: To Assisi
CHAPTER 11
Paces: Beside the Tortured River
