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Coda - John Ruskin’s Switzerland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 December 2022

Patrick Vincent
Affiliation:
Université de Neuchâtel, Switzerland
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Summary

In place of a conclusion, I provide a Coda on John Ruskin, the last major British writer to devote so much attention to the Swiss myth. The myth’s belated iteration in many of his works is the culmination of a long cultural movement that idealized and ideologized the Alps. But Ruskin’s writings on Switzerland are also a reaction to modern transformations brought upon by organized tourism, industrialized capitalism, and liberalism, which made it Europe’s only modern democratic republic in 1848. Focusing on Ruskin’s earlier texts, I suggest that his reactionary vision of Switzerland marks the end of a century-and-half republican tradition in which the various, sometimes conflicting figurations of the Swiss myth contributed to a modern liberal discourse and helped imagine a republic for the moderns. Yet by showing how Europe’s elites romanticized the country as a simulacrum of happiness and freedom while at the same time ruining its proverbial virtue through tourism, Ruskin also brings to the fore the contradictions between liberalism and free-market capitalism, providing us with the most conservative, but perhaps also the most radical of all Romantic representations of Switzerland.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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  • John Ruskin’s Switzerland
  • Patrick Vincent, Université de Neuchâtel, Switzerland
  • Book: Romanticism, Republicanism, and the Swiss Myth
  • Online publication: 08 December 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009210263.008
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  • John Ruskin’s Switzerland
  • Patrick Vincent, Université de Neuchâtel, Switzerland
  • Book: Romanticism, Republicanism, and the Swiss Myth
  • Online publication: 08 December 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009210263.008
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • John Ruskin’s Switzerland
  • Patrick Vincent, Université de Neuchâtel, Switzerland
  • Book: Romanticism, Republicanism, and the Swiss Myth
  • Online publication: 08 December 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009210263.008
Available formats
×