My paper explores the literary process of recasting the space of the Lebanese countryside, and particularly the mythicized northern reaches of Mount Lebanon. The early canonical works of Lebanese fiction, like much of popular and political culture in the pre- and early-Independence period, served to cast the Lebanese mountain as the location of a nostalgically figured idyll. In the writings of Amin Rihani, Jubran Khalil Jubran, Khalil Taqi al-Din, Karam Mulhim Karam, Marun ‘Abbud, and others the spaces of a seemingly timeless yet in fact historically constructed Lebanese pastoral were established. In their romantic fictions and “biographies,” the spaces of a seemingly timeless yet in fact historically constructed pastoral were established. In the first half of my paper I will discuss some of the unifiying narrative strategies of these authors, and the structures of feeling in both fictional narratives and the popular political discourse of this period. This representational posture towards the countryside was continued although considerably complicated by the writers of the mid-twentieth century, and particularly practitioners of the novel. In the novelistic productions of writers such as Y?suf ?abash? al-Ashqar and Tawf?q Y?suf ?Aww?d, the pastoral narrative was often in tension with the counterpastoral, and these spaces began to function textually as the point of opposition to the modern urban formation of Beirut. In light of this Lebanese literary history, I will then offer readings of two contemporary novels, one by Jabbur Douaihy and the other by Hoda Barakat, that treat this same space of Mount Lebanon. The Civil War has certainly served to recode the space of Mount Lebanon, and the texts of Barakat and Douaihy are noticeable for their depiction of violence and deprivation. However, there is more at work than reversal, and these works are not merely counterpastoral. I will argue in my paper that these works can be read as a post-War an effort at literary re-enchantment.