French Literature Reviews - 2026
Walking and Landscape: The Paths of Geopoetics
Comparative and World Literature
Walking and Landscape: The Paths of Geopoetics
Edited by Bertrand Lévy and Alexandre Gillet
Metropolis, 2007
Isbn: 2-88340-169-1
Ean 13 : 9782883401693
€22.00
Publisher's description:
In an age of generalized speed, walking is gradually regaining its virtues: it tones the body, frees the mind, and helps preserve the planet. Geopoetics advocates living around a place in concentric circles, taking the time to truly experience it. Walking is its preferred medium. It gradually unveils the world around us and intensifies our connection with the earth and sky. It is a physical activity, but also a way to deepen thought. Ancient India elevated it to the status of ambulatory meditation. Poets, philosophers, and geographers draw inspiration from this, through narratives of experience and essays that follow in the footsteps of those sensitive to the landscape: Bashō and Kenneth White; Custine, Chateaubriand, and Senancour; Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Robert Walser; Wordsworth and Thoreau; Arthur Rimbaud and André Dhôtel.
"Little by little, step by step, after detailed perception, one enters into a more abstract sensation of the landscape, into a state of cosmic contemplation. Personal identity is lost, it disappears. Walking is a process of opening" (Kenneth White).
Bertrand Lévy and Alexandre Gillet teach geography at the University of Geneva.
The volume edited by Bertrand Lévy and Alexandre Gillet engages with the intellectual tradition of geopoetics, a field concerned with the deep relationship between human consciousness, artistic expression, and geographical space. By examining walking not merely as physical displacement but as a mode of contemplation and engagement witharket environments, the text aligns with broader currents in cultural geography. It reflects upon how various writers, thinkers, and artists have historically turned to pedestrian movement to articulate their perception of the natural world and their place within it, drawing on a long lineage of landscape writing.
The contributions collected in the work address the ways in which walking fosters a heightened awareness of surroundings, serving as both a physical practice and an intellectual exercise. Through references to figures such as Bashō, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Kenneth White, the text touches upon traditions of ambulatory meditation and reflective travel across literature and philosophy. Readers interested in the intersections of geography, literature, and human perception may find this volume relevant to their inquiries into landscape and contemporary thought.