Module 1: Nature and Environment in English Romantic Literature

It is commonly believed that the English Romantic authors were interested in nature as something ideal and pristine. But contemporary critics have discovered that a certain environmentalism and eco consciousness in their poems.
Jonathan Bate, a major ecocritic, sees Wordsworth as an early environmentalist.
Coleridge's “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is about punishment meted out by nature for violation of one of the fundamental laws of nature.
For Coleridge, the poetic consciousness is at one with nature. This is a similarity with Wordsworth.
In "Ode to the West Wind", Shelley uses the West Wind to symbolize the power of nature and of the imagination inspired by nature.
Keats shows a clear ecoconsciousness in poems such as “The Grasshopper and the Cricket”
Byron has more or less anticipated 20th century eco-consciousness and eco-dystopias in his fantasy dream poem “Darkness.”