"Everybody's gotta be somewhere". Northernness and Southernness in the European Imagination, and in the Basque Country

Abstract

This piece tries to orient the reader in some general ideas with which to think about stereotypes of "North" and "South", both generally and with specific reference to the Basque lands. A long-term diachronic perspective is proposed, and examples from both ancient and modern literature, aesthetics, political science and travel writing are drawn on. At the same time, the author encourages students of this kind of problem to pay due attention both to local social realities, and to the particularities of rhetoricdiscernible in any given statement on geocultural identity.