Although a rich ecocritical literature has developed since the 1990s, particularly in the United States and Britain, that addresses many aspects of ecology and its intersection with romanticism, they almost exclusively focus on literature, and define romanticism as a limited literary period of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This study is one of the first to suggest a much broader view of the romantic relation to ecological discourse and representation, covering a range of cultural creations and viewing romanticism as a cultural critique, or protest against capitalist-industrialist modernity in the name of past, pre-modern, or pre-capitalist values.
This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of ecology, romanticism, and the history of capitalism.
Robert Sayre is Professor Emeritus of English and American Literature and Civilization at the University of Paris East, Marne-la-Vallée, France.
Michael Löwy is Emeritus Research Director in Sociology at the Centre nationale de la recherche scientifique, Paris, France.