British Romantic Writing and Environmental Catastrophe

这个项目是浪漫主义写作中第一个对环境灾难的重大调查。直到最近，对浪漫主义的研究往往集中在它如何解决局部自然的复兴力量，而不是研究它对更大规模和潜在破坏性自然现象的关注。这不仅对我们理解这一时期的文学产生了令人遗憾的后果，而且也意味着后来的环境论述倾向于借鉴浪漫主义生态学的狭义版本。我的奖学金将挑战理解浪漫主义和后浪漫主义的自然写作在很大程度上是非政治性的，关注个人和地方经验的批评倾向。它特别关注社区如何经历和代表灾难，以及灾难如何对社区的思想施加压力。该项目将作出创新的贡献，不仅对文学奖学金的时期，改变我们的浪漫生态及其遗产的理解，而且对气候变化的文化史，和灾害研究领域。与“disaster”（灾难）等术语不同，catastrophe（灾难）一词在希腊语中的意思是倾覆、突然转向、终结，它表示事物状态的重大转变，这种转变很可能具有破坏性，但不一定如此。这个项目所涉及的环境灾难包括拜伦勋爵的《黑暗》中宇宙的热寂，威廉·华兹华斯的《序曲》第五卷中人类的毁灭，夏洛特·史密斯的《海滩头》中不列颠群岛与欧洲大陆的地质分离，以及珀西比希雪莱的《解放的普罗米修斯》结尾处欢乐的启示录。该项目有四个关键的研究问题：（1）这些作家如何理解全球背景下政治和环境灾难之间的联系？(2)灾难是如何激发浪漫主义作家想象新的社区形式的？(3)灾难是如何在文本矛盾和形式创新中注册的？(4)浪漫主义时期对灾难的描述在当今环境写作的谱系中扮演了什么角色？我的奖学金是在项目的一个关键阶段，分为两个阶段。第一阶段是1815年至1818年期间的200周年纪念，在这一期间，世界经历了严重的天气干扰和生存危机，主要是1815年印度尼西亚坦博拉火山爆发造成的。我在这一阶段的重点将是完成一个简短的书题为1816年：社区，气候变化和英国浪漫主义。第二阶段的范围，关键是在整个文化历史的环境灾难在这一时期及其以后的影响。这将导致两篇文章，一个委托书章节，和一本书的建议。第二阶段还涉及重要的协作和领导活动。我将与华兹华斯信托基金会共同制作一个画廊展览和一个雄心勃勃的外展计划，主题是浪漫主义，天气和气候。我还将组织一个题为“写作气候”的会议，并与气候变化慈善机构告别角合作，在利兹策划一个相关的文化活动计划，包括一个创意写作项目和年轻人竞赛。除了对浪漫主义文学的一个重要方面产生新的见解外，这项研究还将揭示写作，政治和历史时期灾难之间的关系。该项目的各种成果将对广泛的国际研究人员有价值：浪漫主义者;生态批评或环境人文学专家;文化历史学家;以及在灾害研究领域工作的学者。它还将使之前列出的学术界以外的组织以及参加项目活动并为项目活动做出贡献的公众成员受益。

This project is the first major investigation of environmental catastrophe in Romantic writing. Until recently, approaches to Romanticism have often focused on how it addresses the rejuvenating power of localised nature, rather than examining its concern with larger-scale and potentially disruptive natural phenomena. This has not only had regrettable consequences for our understanding of the period's literature, but also meant that later environmental discourse has tended to draw on a narrow version of Romantic ecology. My fellowship will challenge the critical tendency to understand Romantic and post-Romantic nature writing as largely apolitical and concerned with individual and local experience. It is particularly concerned with how catastrophe was experienced and represented by communities, and how it put pressure on ideas of community. The project will make an innovative contribution not only to literary scholarship on the period, transforming our understanding of Romantic ecologies and their legacy, but also to the cultural history of climate change, and the field of disaster studies. As distinct from terms like 'disaster', catastrophe - from the Greek meaning an overturning, a sudden turn, a conclusion - indicates a major shift in the state of things that may well be destructive, but is not necessarily so. The environmental catastrophes addressed by this project include the heat death of the universe in Lord Byron's 'Darkness', the destruction of humanity 'by deluge' in Book Five of William Wordsworth's The Prelude, the geological separation of the British Isles from mainland Europe in Charlotte Smith's 'Beachy Head', and the joyous apocalypse at the end of Percy Bysshe Shelley's Prometheus Unbound.The project has four key research questions:(1) How did these writers understand the connection between political and environmental catastrophe in a global context? (2) How did catastrophe provoke Romantic writers to imagine new forms of community?(3) How is catastrophe registered in textual ambivalence and formal innovation?(4) What roles have Romantic-period representations of catastrophe played in the genealogy of present-day environmental writing?My Fellowship is timed for a crucial stage in the project and is split into two phases. Phase one addresses the bicentenary of the period from 1815-18, during which the world experienced severe weather disruption and subsistence crises, largely as a result of the eruption of the Indonesian volcano Mount Tambora in 1815. My focus in this phase will be on the completion of a short book entitled 1816: Community, Climate Change and British Romanticism. Phase two ranges critically across the cultural history of environmental catastrophe during the period and its later impacts. It will result in two articles, a commissioned book chapter, and a book proposal. Phase two also involves significant collaborative and leadership activities. I will co-produce a gallery displays and an ambitious outreach programme with the Wordsworth Trust around the topic of Romanticism, weather, and climate. I will also organise a conference entitled Climates of Writing, and work in partnership with the climate-change charity Cape Farewell to curate a related programme of cultural activities in Leeds, including a creative writing project and competition for young people. Apart from generating new insights into an important aspect of Romantic literature, the research will shed light on the relationship between writing, politics, and catastrophe across historical periods. The various outcomes of the project will be valuable to a wide range of international researchers: Romanticists; specialists in ecocriticism or the environmental humanities; cultural historians; and scholars working in the area of disaster studies. It will also benefit the organisations outside academia previously listed, as well as members of the public who attend and contribute to project events.