Author ORCID Identifier

https://orcid.org/0009-0001-3983-7380

Semester

Spring

Date of Graduation

2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Type

PhD

College

Eberly College of Arts and Sciences

Department

English

Committee Chair

Adam Komisaruk

Committee Co-Chair

Timothy Sweet

Committee Member

Timothy Sweet

Committee Member

Noah Heringman

Committee Member

Stephanie Foote

Abstract

The literary field of ecocriticism has transcended the boundaries of Academia: excited to connect to their physical environments, many of these scholars are focusing on genres like place-based writing, rhetoric of energy policy, and representations of the Earth in film and media. Interdisciplinary by nature, ecocriticism has demonstrated clear potential in its ability to intersect with concentrations like the history of science, animal studies, and environmental justice.

However, as the language around global crises is heating up —“Today it is scientists, not prophets,” writes Tobias Menely in “‘The Present Obfuscation,’” “who speak the language of apocalypse” (478)—ecocritical scholarship is at risk of becoming grafted to a singular narrative. While environmental activism is one of several branches of the ecocritical mission, in the face of macrocosmic concerns, from Revelation to Anthropocene, addressing these concerns is a collaborative process with many voices. We must make certain not to cut down other avenues of ecological thought.

In this dissertation, I advocate for ecocriticism’s return to its historical roots in the Romantic Era. Not only were this era’s poets writing at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution (what Paul Crutzen considers the beginning of the Anthropocene); several of the new developments in science, landscape aesthetics, and environmental philosophy of the eighteenth and nineteenth century have informed the imagery, language, and structural frameworks we still use to discuss contemporary environmental questions.

There is a strong body of scholarship in Romantic ecocriticism, but one element that requires our continually revisiting this period is the diversity of environmental philosophies being developed at this time. The scientific disciplines had not yet crystallized into separate departments, and we were not then discussing religion and science as incompatible; having an a stake in the environment did not require adherence to specific tenets regarding resources, technology, or definitions of what “counts” as Nature.

To explore these values, I examine the poetry of four Romantic authors: William Cowper’s The Task, Erasmus Darwin’s The Temple of Nature, Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound, and William Blake’s The Book of Thel. While these four poets diverge in their subject-matter expertise, relationships to their respective environments, and personal belief systems, they each have composed a poetic vision of the Earth (distinguishing what it truly is from what they wish it to be) populated with mythic beings who recreate many of the collaborative conversations we are having now about issues like resource exploitation, Nature’s resilience, and Man’s place in Creation.

By examining this diverse range of ecological thoughts, all of which seek to reconcile Man to Nature without compromising those virtues that make us human—reason, will, sympathy, and creativity—I believe that we will be better positioned to open the ecocritical field to new voices and perspectives.

Download

Share

COinS