Romantic Ecologies

David Kerler, Martin Middeke (Eds.)

Romantic Ecologies. Selected Papers from the Augsburg Conference of the German Society for English Romanticism

ISBN 978-3-98940-003-0, 326 S., 22 Abb., kt., € 36,50 (2023)

(Studien zur Englischen Romantik, Bd. 24)

Romanticism is characterized by a new understanding of nature and environment. Nature does no longer function as a mere purpose oriented setting, but rather as an affective and emotional context of communication with the observing or experiencing subject. The numerous aesthetic ways in which this dialogical interrelationship between subjective experience and scenic object of nature is captured in Romantic literature/art makes Romanticism a ‘proto-ecological’ movement, and today, in times of a world-wide ecological and environmental crisis, Romanticism’s critical explorations of the complex interdependencies between humankind, nature, the environment and aesthetics seem to be relevant as never before. Scrutinizing the strong affinity between Romanticism and environmental issues allows for an insight into the fragile and precarious networks between various ecosystems, human agency and (post-)industrial society in the Anthropocene.

The various contributions to this volume, gathered from the 19th international conference of the German Society for English Romanticism (GER) at Augsburg in 2022, address this new understanding of nature inherent to British Romanticism, explore its relevance for the discourse of environmental humanities in the twenty-first century, and also reconsider the relation between humankind, nature/the environment/ecology and aesthetics in (and through) British Romanticism both in (meta-)theory and practice.

Buchvorschau / Inhaltsverzeichnis (pdf)