ABSTRACT
In the Middle Ages, notes Urbain (1993), the countryside was considered a dangerous domain, a forbidding external territory over which travellers did not linger. Rather, they traversed this hostile space as quickly as they could, permitting themselves relaxation and enjoyment only when they reached the internal protection of the city walls. Urbain also observes that it was not until the mid-nineteenth century that the countryside came to be regarded as worthy of exploration and adventure. This period coincided with the age of Romanticism when rural areas were looked upon as ethnographic sites. Thus the poor peasant became an emblem of authenticity. The countryside was thought of as a primitive state of gentle savagery, an exotic enclave of pure nature. During the overlapping Industrial Revolution, and the subsequent decades which extended well into the twentieth century, it was the city that came to be feared. Moreover, it was against the backdrop of this urban dread that the countryside was projected as a deindustrialized, depoliticized asylum far from the madding crowds, well removed from the toxic waste and pollution associated with urbanization. The countryside was seen as a hygienic and recuperative environment, a place of genuine living and natural rhythms. In other words, premodernity was considered as a refuge from the excesses of rationalism and modernity.
