British Romantic Writing and Environmental Catastrophe

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.

This project speaks to several areas of interest to individuals and institutions beyond academia: (1) Romantic-period literature; (2) the cultural history of weather and climate; (3) environmental catastrophe. Climate change, in particular, is increasingly understood as a social and cultural phenomenon, and therefore the project seeks to encourage environmental awareness through reflection on the historical representation of catastrophe. The project's impacts derive principally from two strands of activity: strand one comprises an exhibition displays and a community outreach programme based at the Wordsworth Trust in Grasmere, Cumbria; strand two comprises cultural events and a schools programme in Leeds created in collaboration with the arts-based climate change organisation Cape Farewell. These two strands will both take place largely in 2017 and will be strategically co-ordinated. They build on an existing collaboration between the University of Leeds and the Wordsworth Trust, and also inaugurate a new long-term partnership with Cape Farewell.

This project's concern with representations of environmental catastrophe will allow it to benefit several non-academic institutions and groups, including:

(1) The Wordsworth Trust will benefit from the research expertise and support of myself and the RA in planning the exhibition displays and outreach programme. (We in turn will benefit from the Trust's curatorial expertise and resources.) It will also benefit from the opportunity to develop new approaches to its collections, to engage new audiences in Leeds and Cumbria, and from the visitor numbers, revenue, and publicity generated by a topic of demonstrable public interest.

(2) The Trust's outreach programme will involve a range of non-academic specialists, including writers, artists, education officers, and teachers. They will benefit from access to project research and the opportunity to use it to engage community groups with art and literature.

(3) Cape Farewell will benefit from this project, principally through collaborations around the Climates of Writing conference and the SWITCH: Youth Poetics programme. Benefits include: access to academic research concerning the relationship between writing and climate change, both historically and in the present day; opportunities to discuss issues surrounding environmental catastrophe with academics and members of the public; resources and opportunities to engage with new audiences on the topic of environmental change, especially in the Leeds area.

(4) The Leeds-based Tetley Gallery will benefit from the opportunity to develop arts-based activities in collaboration with Cape Farewell and the applicant, thereby bringing new resources and members of the public to the Gallery.

(5) Members of the public who attend project events/workshops (academic and/or arts-based) or read the public-facing dissemination materials will benefit from increased understanding of the cultural history of meteorology and environmental catastrophe in relation to present-day issues surrounding weather and climate change, and from the chance to articulate their own contributions to the climate change debate. These beneficiaries will include people living in West Yorkshire and Cumbria, and the large touristic audience for activities and displays at the Trust.

(6) Young people who participate in the SWITCH: Youth Poetics programme and in the Trust's complementary programme for younger children will benefit from increased understanding of Romantic and contemporary representations of environmental catastrophe in relation to debates surrounding climate change and from the chance to work with a leading poet in order to produce their own creative responses. Participants will include pupils at the four Leeds schools involved in the SWITCH workshops and young people who produce work in response to the online writing challenges on the Cape Farewell website.