Religion, Democracy, and the Environmental Imagination in 18th and 19th century British and American Literature

FAIN: FT-58414-11

Mark Sydney Cladis
Brown University (Providence, RI 02912-9100)

An investigation of the central religious, democratic, and environmental dispositions and ideologies that mutually informed each other in 18th & 19th century British Romantic literature and their subsequent legacies in America. There are no substantive studies of this Western, three-way intersection of religion, democracy and the environment. This triscopic approach reveals a less romantic Romanticism: it discloses socio-political environmental and democratic perspectives embedded within Romantic religious and poetic sensibilities. This Romantic legacy was transformed by Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman; their legacy, in turn, informs the work of contemporary American nature writers. Yet to this day, privatized, conventional accounts of Romanticism distort our interpretations of them. The triscopic account, in contrast, makes available the profound socio-political dimensions of their work. As our understanding of the Romantic legacy is enhanced, we better realize its promise.

Associated Products

“Radical Romanticism: Democracy, Religion, and the Environmental Imagination (Article)
Title: “Radical Romanticism: Democracy, Religion, and the Environmental Imagination
Author: Mark Cladis
Abstract: Working at the juncture of religious studies, political theory, and environmental studies, I interrogate and construct a radical Romantic tradition that supports a normative vision of an environmentally responsive democracy that is deeply embodied by its citizens and embedded in its lands. Having investigated the religious, democratic, and environmental dispositions and ideologies that informed eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British Romantic literature and subsequent legacies in America, I now show how this multifarious Romantic legacy, which has already shaped our identity and many of our sensibilities, can assist in the ongoing project of cultivating interrelated democratic and environmental theory, belief, and practice.
Year: 2014
Format: Journal
Publisher: Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal

British Romanticism, Secularization, and the Political and Environmental Implications (Article)
Title: British Romanticism, Secularization, and the Political and Environmental Implications
Author: Mark Cladis
Abstract: This article offers broad lessons for ways to rethink the tangled relation among religion, modernity, and the secular. After characterizing what I mean by theories of secularization and how these theories have dominated our accounts of British romanticism, I consider two poems—one by Coleridge, the other by Wordsworth—that disrupt the view that British Romanticism replaces God with nature and discipline with unencumbered freedom. I conclude by suggesting that when we disclose the language and ways of religion and practice in British Romanticism, we make more apparent its political and environmental dimensions.
Year: 2015
Publisher: International Journal of Philosophy and Theology

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