Romantic Ecology (Routledge Revivals): Wordsworth and the Environmental Tradition

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Routledge, 2014 M12 3 - 132 pages

First published in 1991, Romantic Ecology reassesses the poetry of William Wordsworth in the context of the abiding pastoral tradition in English Literature. Jonathan Bate explores the politics of poetry and argues that contrary to critics who suggest that the Wordsworth was a reactionary who failed to represent the harsh economic reality of his native Lake District, the poet's politics were fundamentally 'green'. As our first truly ecological poet, Wordsworth articulated a powerful and enduring vision of human integration with nature which exercised a formative influence on later conservation movements and is of immediate relevance to great environmental issues today. Challenging the orthodoxies of new historicist criticism, Jonathan Bate sets a new agenda for the study of Romanticism in the 1990s.

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About the author (2014)

Jonathan Bate was born June 26, 1958. He is a British biographer, broadcaster, and leading Shakespeare scholar. He studied at Sevenoaks School, the University of Cambridge, and Harvard University. At Cambridge, he was a Fellow of Trinity Hall. While studying at Harvard, he held a Harness Fellowship. Bate is a professor of Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature at the University of Warwick. He was previously King Alfred Professor of English Literature at the University of Liverpool. He has also lectured at various universities in the United States. Bate is a Fellow of the British Academy and the Royal Society of Literature. He made the Samuel Johnson 2015 shortliast with his title Ted Hughes: The Unauthorised Life. Bate lives near Stratford-upon-Avon and is married to author and biography, Paula Byrne. They have three children.

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