Romantic Sustainability is a collection of sixteen essays that examine the British Romantic era in ecocritical terms. Written by scholars from five continents, this international collection addresses the works of traditional Romantic writers such as John Keats, Percy Shelley, William Wordsworth, Lord Byron, and Samuel Coleridge but also delves into ecocritical topics related to authors added to the canon more recently, such as Elizabeth Inchbald and John Clare. The essays examine geological formations, clouds, and landscapes as well as the posthuman and the monstrous. The essays are grouped into rough categories that start with inspiration and the imagination before moving to the varied types of consumption associated with human interaction with the natural world. Subsequent essays in the volume focus on environmental destruction, monstrous creations, and apocalypse. The common theme is sustainability, as each contributor examines Romantic ideas that intersect with ecocriticism and relates literary works to questions about race, gender, religion, and identity.
List of Illustrations Abbreviations Introduction Part I: Inspiration and the Imagination Chapter 1: Coleridge's "Deep Romantic Chasm": Kubla Khan, the Valley of Rocks, and the Geomorphological Imagination Adrian J. Wallbank Chapter 2: Strict Machine: The DILLIAM Eco-Loop Michael Angelo Tata Chapter 3: Romantic Clouds: Climate, Affect, Hyperobjects Seth T. Reno Chapter 4: "In Some Untrodden Region of My Mind": Mental Landscapes in Keats's Poetry Huey-fen Fay Yao Part II: Diets and Consumption Chapter 5: Sublime Diets: Percy Shelley's Radical Consumption Madison Percy Jones Chapter 6: The Bloodless Church: Dualist Asceticism and Romantic Vegetarianism Emily Paterson-Morgan Chapter 7: The Horror of Starvation: Sustainability in Allan Cunningham's and John Francis Campbell's Supernatural Tales Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns Part III: Alienation and Environmental Degradation Chapter 8: First Child in the Woods: "Nature-Deficit Disorder" and the Future of Romantic Childhood William Stroup Chapter 9: "The Temple of Folly": Transatlantic "Nature," Nabobs, and Environmental Degradation in The Woman of Colour Denys Van Renen Chapter 10: A Pauper's Sustenance: Malthusianism and John Clare's "The Lament of Swordy Well" Kultej Dhariwal Part IV: Beasts and Monsters Chapter 11: Masculinity, Monstrosity, and Sustainability in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein Avishek Parui Chapter 12: The Monsters of Zocotora: Negotiating a Sustainable Identity through the Environment in Elizabeth Inchbald's Nature and Art Ben P. Robertson Chapter 13: Wollstonecraft-Unnatural Woman: Between the Nature of the Feminine and a Gendered Nature Molly Hall Part V: Extinction and Apocalypse Chapter 14: Shelley and the Limits of Sustainability Adam R. Rosenthal Chapter 15: Apocalypse Not Quite: Romanticism and the Post-Human World Olivia Murphy Chapter 16: Questioning Agency: Dehumanizing Sustainability in Mary Shelley's The Last Man Lauren Cameron About the Contributors Index
