What makes a beautiful landscape? The Shaping of Tuscany explains how the Tuscan countryside became an icon of timeless beauty and a popular tourist destination known for its rolling hills, traditional farmhouses, and graceful vineyards that seem to have graced the region since the Renaissance. Yet the argument of the book is that both the natural features of Tuscan agriculture and the cultural representation of Tuscany as an immutable landscape are actually the product of recent social conflict, hard labor, and a huge amount of cultural work. In short, Tuscany is beautiful not because its traditional landscape was preserved intact over time but because Tuscans struggled to produce a legible space in the face of dramatic historical transformations. Rather than just critiquing stereotypical views of Tuscany as an “invented tradition,” the book adopts a tone sympathetic to Tuscans’ own quest for coherence and authenticity. Tuscany’s beauty resonates across cultural boundaries...

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