Reading: The Idea of North

[white_hart]

perennialanna mentioned that she'd been reading Peter Davidson's The Idea of North, and as Davidson (a) was my personal tutor at university, (b) is a member of my current faculty and (c) is genuinely one of the loveliest people I know I was interested to read it myself and very happy to take her up on the offer of borrowing her copy.

The Idea of North is an odd mixture of things; a scholarly examination of the conception of northness through historical, cultural (primarily literature and the visual arts, but there are also reference to cinema and music), social and geographical prisms. The perspective is global, with sections devoted to the north in Canada, China and Japan as well as the more obvious Scandinavia and northern Britain. I found it a fascinating read, full of interesting ideas, and also beautifully written, although, despite mentions of Ursula Le Guin, Margaret Atwood and Tove Jansson the "cultural" strand did leave me with a sense of northness as overwhelmingly male - lots of Nabokov, Auden, Bergman and Simon Armitage, to name but a few. As the book was first published in 2005, it predates "Scandi Noir" which I'm sure would have been an interesting addition, though some of the discussion of Scandinavian interiors and pushing back the darkness of the long winter nights anticipates the recent flood of articles and books about hygge.

Comments

[perennialanna]

I'm so glad you liked it!

[white_hart]

So am I - it would have been sad to dislike a book by someone I like so much as a person! I thought it was lovely, though. Thanks for lending - I will get it back in the post to you next week.