This course will read 'ecologically' a range of writing from the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries to ask how far engagements between nature and the human are determined by Romantic precepts, and how these might change in the context of contemporary environmental crisis. Students will use theoretical, historical, aesthetic and polemical writing on the natural world to examine and reflect on their own 'ecological' position by identifying issues of sustainability in literary texts and in our critical approaches to them.

1 x 2hr seminar per week over eight weeks, 2 x 2hr workshops, as scheduled on MyCampus.

This is one of the Honours options in English Literature and may not run every year. The options that are running this session are available on MyCampus.

ENGLIT4023  Romantic Ecologies

The standard assessments for this course are: 

■ Essay (1700 words): 30%  

■ Essay (3000 words): 50%  

■ Seminar and workshop contribution: 5%  

■ Seminar presentation of 7 minutes: 15% 

If required, for instance where a disability prevents a student from undertaking a specific method of assessment, the following alternatives are available: 

■ There are no alternatives to the Essay (1700 words), but flexible deadlines can be offered as reasonable adjustment (Students should follow the usual process for extensions). 

■ There are no alternatives to the Essay (3000 words), but flexible deadlines can be offered as reasonable adjustment (Students should follow the usual process for extensions). 

■ Written self-evaluation reflecting on seminar contribution or written response to seminar material in advance or after seminar as alternative to seminar contribution.

■ Recorded presentation or one-to-one presentation / discussion/Q&A with staff (where presentation would normally be in class) as alternative to presentation.

Further reasonable adjustments may be provided where necessary. Students are encouraged to consult with the course convenor.  

This course will provide the opportunity to:

■ explore the significance of current critical debates around ecology to the study of literature in English

■ interrogate sustainability as a central feature of literary study

■ discuss ecology as a focus for the aesthetic and the material in literary texts

■ identify Romanticism as an ecological position and ecology as a conceptual continuity between texts of the eighteenth, nineteenth, twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

By the end of this course students will be able to:

■ evaluate key positions in current ecocritical debates

■ critically reflect on sustainability as a feature of literary texts and as an imperative in literary study

■ analyse and contribute to a range of materialist and aesthetic debates raised by the issue of eco-poetics

■ evaluate Romanticism's contribution to subsequent understanding of the natural world

■ analyse different kinds of continuity between Romantic writers and their predecessors and descendants

■ communicate responses to the material studied on the course both orally and in written form through coherent and sustained argument.

■ demonstrate resilience and time management through effectively planning, undertaking and submitting coursework.

■ deal with change and new challenges by applying their disciplinary skills and knowledge to previously unfamiliar research areas and questions.