When I was in graduate school several years back the most impressive historiographical works we were expected to read wad Orientalism by Edwars Said and of course, Metahistory by Hayden White. Those were diffent days. History was still regarded as a way of apprehending the real world in all its complexity. Narrative was only a menomic tool to ensure that the chronological ordering of events is in the framework of what was called causation. Intellectual history meant situating ideas in their historical contexts an understanding that is today regarded as passe. These are post modernist time and the simple language of historians trying to understand the real world has been replaced by a hugely comple and bewildering range of jargon terms which do not make any sense: they foreground instead of gioving importance, they privlege instead of telling a straight story.
Therefore it was simply wonderful to read Simon Schama who has writtten Landscape and Memory. This book is written so well that I was able to read it from cover to cover in one weekend. Schama speaks of the varied ways in which humans have coded their landscape both in paintinngs and literature. The fact is that our relationship with our landscape is being constasntly redefined and in that process we become more aware of the strong ties that bind us to our land.
