“…That meant maintaining the traditional focus on the canonical male Romantic poets, led by William Wordsworth, although they did put different Wordsworthian texts centre stage: “Home at Grasmere” and the Guide to the Lakes . The Guide 's description of the Lake District as “a sort of national property, in which every man has a right and interest who has an eye to perceive and a heart to enjoy” (Wordsworth, 1835/, p. 225) became talismanic. Bate summed up this Romantic understanding of “literary ecocriticism”: A central question in environmental ethics is whether to regard humankind as part of nature or apart from nature.…”
This essay examines the origins, development, and future of Romantic ecocriticism. British Romanticism has always been central to discussions of literature and the environment. Here, I offer the most extensive assessment to date of relevant scholarship. I concentrate on book‐length studies of British literature circa 1780–1830, generally excluding books about individual authors. I close by outlining a new agenda for the field. Instead of claiming to reveal the origins of contemporary environmental sensibilities, I argue, Romantic ecocritics should work towards a critical history of regimes of environmental exploitation. Part one of the essay analyses the paths taken and not taken in ecocritical studies of the Romantic period between 1970 and 2000. Part two parses the diversity of Romantic ecocriticism in the early twenty‐first century. Part three argues that Romantic ecocriticism's central concern should be the environmental changes associated with the industrial revolution.
“…That meant maintaining the traditional focus on the canonical male Romantic poets, led by William Wordsworth, although they did put different Wordsworthian texts centre stage: “Home at Grasmere” and the Guide to the Lakes . The Guide 's description of the Lake District as “a sort of national property, in which every man has a right and interest who has an eye to perceive and a heart to enjoy” (Wordsworth, 1835/, p. 225) became talismanic. Bate summed up this Romantic understanding of “literary ecocriticism”: A central question in environmental ethics is whether to regard humankind as part of nature or apart from nature.…”
This essay examines the origins, development, and future of Romantic ecocriticism. British Romanticism has always been central to discussions of literature and the environment. Here, I offer the most extensive assessment to date of relevant scholarship. I concentrate on book‐length studies of British literature circa 1780–1830, generally excluding books about individual authors. I close by outlining a new agenda for the field. Instead of claiming to reveal the origins of contemporary environmental sensibilities, I argue, Romantic ecocritics should work towards a critical history of regimes of environmental exploitation. Part one of the essay analyses the paths taken and not taken in ecocritical studies of the Romantic period between 1970 and 2000. Part two parses the diversity of Romantic ecocriticism in the early twenty‐first century. Part three argues that Romantic ecocriticism's central concern should be the environmental changes associated with the industrial revolution.
“…He wrote, 'It is generally supposed that waterfalls are scarcely worth being looked at except after much rain, and that, the more swoln the stream, the more fortunate the spectator; but this, however, is true only of large cataracts with sublime accompaniments, and not even these without drawbacks' (Wordsworth [1810(Wordsworth [ ] 1951). On a visit to Aysgarth Falls in Yorkshire after heavy rain, the poet's sister Dorothy felt that, 'There was too much water for the beauty of the falls' which lose their characteristic terraced form when in spate (Wordsworth [1897(Wordsworth [ ] 1941.…”
Section: Waterfalls Landscape Aesthetics Travel and Tourismmentioning
Waterfalls have long attracted the attention of travellers, some of whom were writers and artists who have left us a cultural legacy of their observations and interpretations. Likewise, geologists have studied and recorded these landscape features since the infancy of their science. An examination of travellers' experiences of waterfalls since the emergence of Romanticism in eighteenth-century Europe reveals a variety of responses, both utilitarian and aesthetic. Seen as valuable sources of renewable energy, impediments to navigation, beautiful, sublime or picturesque natural wonders and resources for tourism, waterfalls continue to appeal to the Romantic traveller and the pleasure-seeking tourist. Increasingly, waterfalls are being threatened by schemes to exploit them, especially for power generation or intensive tourism development. In many parts of the world, this presents a serious challenge to those responsible for the management of this often spectacular aspect of geodiversity. This paper explores these various themes which are contextualized within the historical and cultural framework of Romanticism.
“…In this wish the author will be joined by persons of pure taste throughout the whole island, who, by their visits (often repeated) to the Lakes in the North of England, testify that they deem the district a sort of national property, in which every man has a right and interest who has an eye to perceive and a heart to enjoy. (Wordsworth 1835: 88)…”
This is an article about the embodied, sensual experience of rural landscape as a site where racialized feelings of national belonging get produced. Largely impervious to criticism and reformation by 'thin' legal-political versions of multicultural or cosmopolitan citizenship, it is my suggestion that this racialized belonging is best confronted through the recognition and appreciation of precisely what makes it so compelling. Through an engagement with the theorization of affect in the work of Divya Praful Tolia-Kelly, I consider the resources immanent to the perception of landscapes of national belonging that might be repurposed to unravel that belonging from within. I suggest that forms of environmental consciousness can unpick the mutually reinforcing relationships between nature and nation, opening up opportunities for thinking identity and belonging in different ways, and allowing rural landscapes to become more hospitable places.
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