The Ecology of British Romantic Conservatism, 1790-1837 [Hardcover]

Analyzing Romantic conservative critiques of modernity found in literature, philosophy, natural history, and agricultural periodicals, this book finds a common theme in the 'intergenerational imagination.' This impels an environmental ethic in which obligations to past and future generations shape decisions about inherited culture and land.Acknowledgements Abbreviations PART I: IMAGINATION Introduction: Conservatism and the Intergenerational Imagination 1. Intergenerational Imagination in Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France 2. 'Their graves are green': Conservation in William Wordsworth's Epitaphic Ballads PART II: HABITATION 3. The Politics of the Miniature in Thomas Bewick's History of British Bir ds 4. Conservation or Catastrophe: Reflexive Regionalism in Maria Edgeworth's Irish Tales 5. Subsistence as Resistance: William Cobbett's Food Politics 6. Anthropomorphism and the Critique of Liberal Rights in John Clare's Enclosure Elegies Epilogue Notes Bibliography Index

Castellano makes an important and original contribution to the growing number of environmental readings of the Romantic period. Her argument has the potential to reshape and even redefine the terms of the discussion, forcing readers to rethink easy assumptions about the political orientations of poets such as William Wordsworth and John Clare and offering new insights into artists such as Thomas Bewick and Maria Edgeworth. Her provocative and well-researched analysis is one that future scholars will be forced to reckon with. - Bridget M. Keegan, Creighton University, USA

Katey Castellano is Associate Professor of English at James Madison University in Virginia, USA. She is the author of articles published in SubStance, Partial Answers, Romanticism on the Net, and Papers on Language and Literature. Currently, she is working on a book about Romantic period commons.