Wordsworth and the Poetics of Air
Part of Cambridge Studies in Romanticism
- Author: Thomas H. Ford, University of Melbourne
- Date Published: June 2020
- availability: Available
- format: Paperback
- isbn: 9781108441032
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Before the ideas we now define as Romanticism took hold the word 'atmosphere' meant only the physical stuff of air; afterwards, it could mean almost anything, from a historical mood or spirit to the character or style of an artwork. Thomas H. Ford traces this shift of meaning, which he sees as first occurring in the poetry of William Wordsworth. Gradually 'air' and 'atmosphere' took on the new status of metaphor as Wordsworth and other poets re-imagined poetry as a textual area of aerial communication - conveying the breath of a transitory moment to other times and places via the printed page. Reading Romantic poetry through this ecological and ecocritical lens Ford goes on to ask what the poems of the Romantic period mean for us in a new age of climate change, when the relationship between physical climates and cultural, political and literary atmospheres is once again being transformed.
Read more- Examines Romantic-era poetry in the context of ecological and environmental studies
- Explores how Wordsworth, in particular, marks a change in the meaning of 'atmosphere'
- Considers how the shifting meanings of 'atmosphere', both scientific and metaphorical, affect our twenty-first-century readings of Romantic poets
Reviews & endorsements
'… richly theorized and discursively broad-ranging … Ford convincingly argues that we in the Anthropocene, confronted by a new literalization of cultural atmosphere as climate, have much to learn from this Romantic discourse on atmosphere.' Scott Hess, Review 19
See more reviews'… Ford offers intriguing readings of a suite of natural history and medico-material texts both central and somewhat peripheral to standard Romantic criticism, including Herder, Goethe, Keats, Howard, Priestley, and Faraday.' Michelle Levy, The Wordsworth Circle
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×Product details
- Date Published: June 2020
- format: Paperback
- isbn: 9781108441032
- length: 288 pages
- dimensions: 230 x 150 x 20 mm
- weight: 0.43kg
- contains: 6 b/w illus.
- availability: Available
Table of Contents
1. Atmospheric Romanticism
2. Atmospheric mediation
3. Romantic meteorology
4. Atmospheric aesthetics
5. In the breathing chamber: 'lines written a few miles above'.
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