Melancholy and Sublime Spain: A Study of George Borrow’s Representation of the Spanish Landscape in The Bible in Spain (1843)

Abstract

This article explores the representation of different Spanish natural and urban landscapes in George Borrow’s travel book The Bible in Spain (1843). The study focuses on the author’s allusions to the aesthetic category of the sublime and to melancholy, an emotion associated with the experience of sublimity in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. The principal objective is to examine the way in which Borrow appreciates the diversity of different regions of Spain through his interpretation of the Spanish landscape as melancholic and sublime. The traveller’s descriptions of the solitude and melancholy of Salamanca and the plains of Castile contrast dramatically with his vision of Seville as a paradise where melancholy cannot be felt. Moreover, Borrow portrays the Castilian plains and the valleys of El Bierzo as sublime, but he claims that the Leonese landscape resembles the English countryside and lacks the cheerlessness that characterises Castile. Lastly, the traveller emphasises the harshness of the sublimity of Cape Finisterre and associates this quality with the essence of Spaniards. Therefore, this article demonstrates that Borrow does not picture Spain as a homogeneous country because he distinguishes between different landscapes and regions through the concepts of melancholy and the sublime.