Transatlantic Romanticisms: Culture, Nationalism, and the "Empire of Man"
Overview
Following Bacon's rhetorical precedent, England's eighteenth-century scientists promised to extend and consolidate "the Empire of Man" over nature. However, this "Empire" did not take the form of a universalized human utopia. Since Enlightenment natural philosophy was a distinctive product of European culture, its global dissemination helped to produce "a new kind of Eurocentred planetary consciousness" (Pratt 1992). While pursuing human empire over nature, in other words, science supported European colonialism, the reality of which forcibly harnessed the knowledge and labour of colonized peoples to the efficient exploitation of natural resources on a global scale.
Many of England's Romantic-period authors were aware of this political scenario. Often outspokenly opposed to colonialist policies, and privileging a holistic model of nature that anticipated the advent of modern ecological science, they became, indeed, the conceptual progenitors of much present-day cultural and environmental activism. Focusing on representations of the Americas in selected canonical and non-canonical Romantic texts, my research historicizes these modes of critical activism, analyzing their various intersections and commonalities. In particular, I investigate Romantic-era ethnographic and scientific practices, including the cultural and ecological implications attending related concepts of race and species, human and animal rights, cultural and environmental ÒImprovementÓ, and Eurocentric models of human ÒdominionÓ over nature. In order to account for wider cultural contexts, my study also considers Romantic representations in relation to writings on nature and culture produced by such contemporary non-Europeans as Ignatius Sancho, Mary Prince, and Olaudah Equiano, as well as Chief Joseph Sawyer, Kahgegagahbowh (George Copway), and Kahkewaquonaby (Peter Jones). By bringing postcolonial and ecological modes of literary criticism into much-needed historical dialogue, I hope to clarify the "biological, ecological component" of European imperialism (Crosby 1986), while simultaneously illuminating the cultural implications of environmental politics.
Annotated Bibliography
This annotated bibliography is a work in progress and as such will be modified, revised, and updated periodically.