Please explain to me why hilly landscapes are considered superior to lowland ones?

[schroeder]

Can I just blame Gilpin? Those mad Georgians wandering around the lake district marveling at just how wonderfully picturesque it all is.

I didn't know they were. But in yer literature, landscapes - hilly ones - are often used as metaphors for a work's themes, so off the top off my head maybe they're seen as more popular (rather than better) for that reason.

Eg 1: hilly landscapes feature a lot in novels as metaphors for the social scale - eg the manor house at the top of the hill, the peasant cottages down below, etc. As a hasty example, Austen's Emma uses geography - or topography - like this throughout.

Eg2: Wuthering heights. Hilly landscape = passion and that.

Am just trying to think of a famous piece of writing that contains a flat landscape. Keats' Ozymandias - but that's a bit short.

Constable didn't agree though did he? Most of his work features pretty flat landscapes.

Constable was from Suffolk though wasn't he?

only because hilly landscapes remain free from development more than lowland areas - though there are remarkable areas of lowland fens etc. that are also undeveloped.

Well a lot of different cultures round the world have supernatural beings and/or gods living in the mountains, from the Greek gods living on Mount Olympus, to the sacred peaks of the Himalayas and all those Andean child sacrifices on mountain tops.
Presumably because the mountains were hard to get to, have severe weather and can be seen from a long way away, they just seem more impressive to communities who would naturally live somewhere easier to farm/hunt-gather.

So maybe it's a hangover from that.

Also, nowadays, what fluffles says....