Borders and Thresholds of Landscape: the Literary Case of North Lake Garda

Abstract

The perception of landscape and its literary representations of the Lake Garda area is thematically proposed as a metaphor of the concept of boundary or threshold and is recognized as a predominant characteristic of theLake Garda area and more generally of the Trentino Alto Adige.

In this paper I propose a series of theoretical observations in constant dialogue with the historical and literary dynamics that aim to present this particular landscape as a place where we combine perceptive, representational, cultural contrasts, crossing classicism, modernism and postmodernism. North / South, Mediterranean / Alpine, locus amoenus / locus horridus, renovation of the landscape / death of the landscape are just some of the antithesis of the space of Northern Lake Garda. Perhaps, these opposites may help define a border reality, which can be recognized in many other places of the Italian landscape and beyond. One in the mirror of the other, travelers and writers, as Virgil, Dante, Montaigne, Goethe, Mann, Kafka, configure the landscape identity then made of a space capable of expressing the sense of being on the border and at the same time reflecting on landscape as a postmodern aesthetic product integrated in the production of goods in general.