Mountains as a novel staging ground in late medieval and early modern literature

The attitude about and treatment of the mountain in late medieval literature and art can be utilized well to identify the critical moments of the paradigm shift from the Middle Ages to the early modern age. While medieval writers and artists normally presented the mountain as a threatening and hostile geophysical entity, this changed considerably by the end of the fifteenth century. Crucial examples confirming this thesis are drawn from the famous pilgrimage account by Felix Fabri, Aeneas Silvio Piccolomini's chronicle of Austria, and Emperor Maximilian I's allegorical romance Tewrdank. The study is then rounded off with a brief examination of the discovery of the motif of the mountainous landscape in sixteenth-century art.