Green Romanticism

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We often trace today's environmental ideas back to the Romantic period. Enjoying the Industrial Revolution's benefits, this era also contended with the social upheaval and environmental damage it unleashed. Green Romanticism takes an ecocritical view of nature representation in English literature 1775-1900. It considers a panorama of writers including William Wordsworth, Charlotte Smith, William Morris and Margaret Gatty. For Wordsworth, 'love of nature' leads to 'love of man', suggesting contact with nature enhances human well-being. This work analyzes three structured themes: attitudes to the countryside, botany and animals, with focused discussion of topics such as botanical erotica and great apes. Romantic nature sympathy can be dismissed as trivial or even dangerous. Literature concerned with skylarks, sensitive plants, aeolian harps and those much loved daffodils, may appear quaint, if not perverse. Yet, rejecting charges of sentimentality, this book explores Green Romanticism's ongoing political resonance as anticapitalist dissent. Progressively, it is humanity's utopian quest to balance environmental sustainability with the realization of a just and emancipated society.