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., 19 Abb. EUR 36,50   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.


CONTENTS


DAVID KERLER AND MARTIN MIDDEKE
Romantic Ecologies: Introduction 1


ANGELA ESTERHAMMER
Nature, Settlement, and History in John Galt's Transatlantic Tales 17


MARIE HOLOGA
Imaginative Geography and the 'Planter Picturesque' in Colonial Histories of the Long 18th Century 27


SOPHIA LANGE
Of Solitary Wanderers and Natural Entanglements: William Godwin's Socio-political Criticism as Romantic Ecopoetics 43


UTE BERNS
Energy Ecologies in Joanna Baillie's "Address to a Steam-Vessel" (1823) 57


SHINYA MATSUZAKI
Animism Has Always Mattered—Naturally among English Romantics 75


YUKO OTAGAKI
Diverse Environmental Aesthetics in European Romantic Pastorals: Milkmaid Songs from the Wave of the Genius Craze 91


THERESA M. KELLEY
Prophecy, Epigenesis and Futurity 107


DEWEY W. HALL
The Ecology of the Goslar Verses: Weather, Pico Viejo, and Material Objects 127


SEBASTIAN ØRTOFT RASMUSSEN
Sensing the World as Interconnected: Charlotte Smith's Geological Poetry 149


JONATHAN CULLER
Addressing Nature 171


STEFANIE JOHN
Romantic Childhood, Education, and Activism in Dara McAnulty's Diary of a Young Naturalist 185


REBEKKA ROHLEDER
Mediated Nature in Mary Shelley's Keepsake Stories 201


IAN DUNCAN
Environmental Aesthetics: Dorothy Wordsworth in Scotland 215


HÉLÈNE IBATA
From "Delightful Horror" to Ecological Warning: The Uses of the Sublime in Romantic and Post-Industrial Landscapes 229


CYNTHIA CHASE
The Survival of Ossian: Coming Up against Translation in Goethe's Werther 251


CATHERINE JONES
"Translations" from Poetry to Music: Concepts of Nature in Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812–18) and Liszt's Album d'un voyageur (1842) 267


CHRISTOPH REINFANDT
Romantic Ecologies for the 21st Century? From Charlotte Smith's "Apostrophe to an Old Tree" to Suzanne Simard's Finding the Mother Tree 279


TILOTTAMA RAJAN
The Textual Ecology of Schelling's First Outline of a System of the Philosophy of Nature (1799) 293


List of Contributors 313