Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Books
  3. Wordsworth and the Poetics of Air
  • Cited by 19
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
June 2018
Print publication year:
2018
Online ISBN:
9781108569316
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108569316
Subjects:
Literature, English Literature 1700-1830
Series:
Cambridge Studies in Romanticism (121)
Information

Book description

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.

Reviews

'… 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 Source: Review 19

‘… 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 Source: The Wordsworth Circle

Refine List

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

Contents

Contents
References

Metrics

Altmetric attention score

Full text views

Total number of HTML views: 0
Total number of PDF views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

Book summary page views

Total views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

* Views captured on Cambridge Core between #date#. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

Usage data cannot currently be displayed.