Arcadia

Arcadia ( Arkadia Αρκαδία Modern Greek ) is a landscape in the center of the Peloponnese and is one of the five regional districts of the Greek region of Peloponnese. Arcadia was established after the independence of Greece in 1833 as a prefecture and lost this status by the Greek administrative reform in 2010. As Regional District Arcadia sends eight representatives to the Regional Council of the Peloponnese, in addition, however, has no political significance. The capital is the city of Tripoli.

4.1 Reception of the Arcadian dream in the early modern period
4.2 Exhibitions

Geography

The present territory roughly corresponds to that known from antiquity concluded mountain and highland Arcadia and has only a relatively narrow access to the Peloponnesian east coast on the eastern slope of Parnon. In contrast, the Arcadia of ancient times was only the highlands off the coasts and not much further south than Mgalopoli.

The region is on average 500 meters above sea level in the north to reach the summit 2376m ( Ziria ), 2355 m ( Chelmos ) and 2,224 m ( Olonos ). The rock is limestone with numerous karst phenomena. Intermediate ridge endorheic basins that partially lakes or swamps are formed.

Arcadia is predominantly forested with conifers and sparsely populated. The agriculture in the valleys is low yields, traditionally the region was used by grazing.

Structure

Arcadia includes the municipalities Gortynia, Megalopolis, Notia Kynouria, Tripoli and Voria Kynouria.

Population Development

History

Myth of Arcadia

The Arcadians were in ancient times as a rough pastoral people. Certain traits of Arcadia can be explained by its isolated geographical location. Its inhabitants consider themselves to be the oldest Greek people in general. Even in the time of Hellenism Arcadia was transfigured to the site of the Golden Age, where people lived unburdened of painstaking work and social conformity pressure in an idyllic natural as satisfied and happy shepherds. Still be denoted by Arcadia places with a blissful idyllic country life. Accordingly, it was the ideal subject of ancient bucolic literature ( for example, the pastoral poems of Virgil ), but also the rich bucolic literature of the European Renaissance and Baroque as well as countless paintings from the 16th to the 18th century. In the ancient Latin literature of the originally in Greece Town is often deployed to Sicily.

Reception of the Arcadian dream in the early modern period

From the myth of Arcadia, the idea was recovered in the early modern period, it was life beyond societal constraints possible. These were at their core political fantasies, which were mainly fueled by the high nobility, who came under political pressure from the stabilizing early modern state under considerable peer pressure. Under the surface of this aristocratic Escapism the idea of individual freedom was born and maintained, although the freedom of the United nobles meant, but, but then inherited since the 17th century in the Netherlands since the 18th century in France and Germany by the bourgeoisie been.

An essential part of this dream of freedom was the Arcadian shepherd ideology, a diverse composite system of ideas, the core of the pastoral literature and their processing is to motifs of decorative arts since the 17th century. According to these ideas nobles flee before the unbearable society in the country, dress up there as a shepherd and interact with the acting there "real" shepherds in contact. Theme of the actions of this literature Shepherd or books herders is especially love. Occasionally, however, the shepherd idyll is ( as in the Astrée by Honoré d' Urfé ) hit massively by the reality of a violent life ( as in the Galatea of Miguel de Cervantes ) or the World of Knights and their acts of war, what with all the symbolism of the Pastorale a significant train represents to the realism. The death, which refers in Nicolas Poussin's Arcadian Shepherds on itself with a autoreferentiellen inscription on the Epitaph, plays at the symbolic level of the mythological image a reality analogous structure through: namely belonging to the real life presence of death in the midst of a happy life.

What initially only appeared as a masque, was in the symbolic self-presentation of nobles to the image program: aristocrats settled in Shepherd costume paint and sat down as pastors in the scene. This was the excessive symbolic form, with the archaic notion that the ruler was always a shepherd of his people, has survived and updated in modern times as part of aristocratic claims to power and legitimacy of power.

On the reception of the idea of happy Arcadia was also one that the area over which a nobleman exercised its territorial sovereignty, as a new Arcadia was presented. In this way, the aristocrats withdrawn at least on the symbolic level, its sphere of influence of the power of the royal central power.

Corresponding Arcadian landscapes existed in early modern Europe, especially as a literary mediated constructions and fantasies. So Honoré d' Urfé was playing the action of his pastoral romance L' Astrée in his native Le Forez ( Loire department in today). Le Forez is transformed in this way, at least in the poetic image in a modern Arcadian landscape. Similar phenomena could find anywhere in Europe, particularly in the context of horticultural efforts. Another example is the flare landscape at Hundisburg castle.

Exhibitions

2014 Arcadia - paradise on paper. Landscape and Myth in Italy, Prints and Drawings Berlin, March 7 bis June 22, 2014

About 100 Italian works, created between the mid-15th and the beginning of the 17th century, the time of Botticelli, Parmigianino, Campagnola and Guercino, show the richness of the ideas of longing Arcadia: The nature is idealized and mystical and mythical atmosphere surrounded, which brings a closeness with her expression.

Traffic

European Route 65
National Road 7, SW, S, Zen., O
National Road 33, northwest
National Road 37, Zen., S
National Road 74, Zen., NW, W
National Road 76 W SW

Quote

" I too was born in Arcadia, ... but tears were only the short Lenz me. "

TV

Arkadikí Radiophonia tileorasi

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