Volcanoes in Eighteenth-Century Europe

An Essay in Environmental Humanities

This study exploresthe explosive history of volcanoes and volcanic thought in eighteenth-centuryEurope, arguing that the topic of the volcano informed almost all areas ofhuman enquiry and endeavour at the time.

Encountered on theGrand Tour, sought out by scientific explorers or endured by local populationsin southern Italy and Iceland, erupting volcanoes were a physical reality for manyEuropeans in the eighteenth-century. For many others, they represented the veryimage of overwhelming natural power, whether this was ultimately attributed tospiritual or material causes. As such, the volcano proved an effective andversatile ‘tool for thinking’ in a century which ushered in modernity onseveral fronts: continental tourism, new earth sciences, the sublime andpicturesque in art, industrial and political revolution, the conception of themodern nation-state, and early intimations of environmental and climate change.But the volcano also gives us, in the twenty-first century, a privileged site(as both topography and topos) atwhich we can reconnect disparate and divided fields of research across thesciences and the humanities.

Drawing on a rich variety ofmulti-lingual primary sources and the latest critical thinking, this studycombines material and symbolic readings of eighteenth-century volcanism,constantly shifting frameworks, so as to consider this topical object throughdifferent disciplinary perspectives. The volcano is clearlytransnational; this research also demonstrates how it is fundamentallytransdisciplinary.

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