ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the complex genealogies and tensions embedded in the mantle/surface metaphor through artistic and poetic spatial representations representative of different key stages in western spatial history. It shows how, in spite of its resilience, the mantle metaphor has undergone changes over time and how these changes reflect shifting attitudes towards geographical knowledge-making, as well as towards landscape and the world as objects of aesthetic contemplation or distrust. As Italian geographer Franco Farinelli comments, there is a systematic opposition between Gaia and Chthonia: the former refers to the earth as something of clear, manifest, superficial and therefore horizontal; the latter, by contrast, implies invisibility. The very origins of this mode of knowing are to be sought in the Hellenistic and Judaeo-Christian traditions. In both traditions, the earth and the heavens repeatedly feature as garments, thus marking the history of western (geographical) thought for the centuries to come.
