Nature in British Romantic Literature: Values and Themes

Introduction

19th-century British literature is widely characterized by Romanticism. British Romanticism is an epoch encompassing various aspects of the arts, including painting, music, philosophy, and, most notably, literature (Forward, 2014). The purpose of this proposal is to evaluate how nature is used in British Romantic literature to express the fundamental values of this literary movement. The Romantic Era was directly preceded by the period of Enlightenment; in many ways, Romanticism was seen as a reaction to dissatisfaction with some of the precepts of that earlier age.

This proposal will examine the role of nature in British Romanticism to understand the core morals and principles that were not only important to its authors, but that also defined the zeitgeist in which they were writing. It will analyze the salience of nature's role in the works of numerous British Romantic authors in the 19th century (Shaw, 2014), and extract motifs for how nature is deployed to convey the principles that mattered most to the writers and to the particular time in which they lived.

Background of the Study

Nature has played a number of different roles in the artistic movements that have populated world history. Depending on which literary era one examines, nature is viewed in either negative or positive terms, either as a causative agent or as a reactionary effect of an alternative catalyst. The 19th-century British Romantic period followed the Enlightenment, in which the overall value of nature — particularly as conceived of as an expression of God — was subverted to the prowess of man (Grote, 2017, p. 353).

Many of the most prominent Romantic writers of the 19th century, such as the poets William Blake, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and William Wordsworth, embraced an alternative aesthetic in which nature factored so prominently that some critics have considered them to have forgotten the "real world" (Behrendt, 2000, p. 145). As such, it is necessary to delve into their texts to understand how nature is used to demonstrate that aesthetic and the underlying values which support it, and to understand the core concerns of 19th-century British society.

Significance of the Study

This study is significant because it will help to pinpoint exactly why there was a preoccupation with nature during 19th-century British Romantic literature. Many different sources indicate that nature was one of the dominant themes of the works produced during this age. It is important to understand why and how nature was used to elucidate some of the central concepts found throughout British society during this period. The artistic movement that directly followed Romanticism — Victorianism — was much more conservative in the social values it represented (Cohen, 2017, p. 40).

It is necessary to understand how Romanticism may have created an oppositional set of social standards in the era that succeeded it, in order to fully contextualize the role of nature in typifying Romanticism's primary precepts. It is also important to focus on this period because the literature it produced stands at variance with the majority of literature produced in British history — specifically that generated during the Enlightenment, the Victorian Age, and most other eras (Cohen, 2017, p. 42). Studying British Romantic literature will reveal why such liberal views populated Britain at that time, and what they indicate about British society as a whole.

Study Objective: The purpose of this study is to deconstruct how nature is used in British Romantic literature to express the fundamental values of this literary age.

Research Questions:

1. What are the main concepts of British Romantic literature?
2. What role does nature have in demonstrating those concepts?
3. What are the social implications of the concepts that nature is used to represent?

Literature Review

The subject of nature is a recurring motif in some of the most prominent literary works from the British Romantic period in the 19th century. Nature is considered within the context of humanity in Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein. There are two cardinal ways in which nature factors into Shelley's magnum opus. First, it shapes the setting of the novel, which largely takes place within the sublime backdrop of the Swiss Alps. Phillips (2006) analyzes the importance of nature in terms of weather in this novel — both when the idea for the novel was conceived and as it functions throughout the plot (p. 59).

Moreover, nature functions as a counterpoint to the core theme of the novel, in which man attempts to play creator — a role traditionally imputed to God in natural life. Banerjee (2011) explores this notion as an oppositional binary to the question of science developed throughout Shelley's work (p. 1). Frankenstein focuses on nature in terms of the natural processes it involves with the human body, creating an interesting juxtaposition between nature and mankind.

One of the most enduring conceptions of nature's role in British Romantic poetry is that of the sublime (Malakash and Pourqarib, 2018, p. 233). This tenet is demonstrated both in Frankenstein and in a number of John Keats' writings. Malakash and Pourqarib (2018) discuss this recurring theme in Keats' poetry, epic poetry, and letters, particularly his usage of the wilderness to represent ineffable conceptualizations (p. 233). The sublime is also invoked on multiple occasions in Frankenstein as a testament to the kind of natural wonder that Victor Frankenstein cannot hope to reproduce. Wordsworth is widely regarded as having spearheaded the Romantic focus on the concept of the sublime (Shaw, 2014).

Nature is also represented in British Romanticism in terms of aging, which culminates in death. Abdelwahed (1997) references the notion that, frequently in Romantic texts, death was viewed as a means of escaping the world and transcending to something better. The cycle of death and rebirth inherent in nature is also given credence by Romantic authors such as William Wordsworth, who revered youth and even the earliest stages of infancy as a means of approaching the universal truths esteemed by Romantic writers.

This thematic device is particularly prominent in Wordsworth's "Resolution and Independence" (2003), though it abounds in the work of other early authors as well. There is a definite preoccupation with youth and youthful vigor found in Keats' best writings, which reinforces the value of nature and the cycle of life and death. Perhaps this notion is most powerfully evidenced in Shelley's poem about Keats (1821), in which he likens the poet's youthful death to a return to the "loveliness" of nature — alluding to the high valuation of this conception and to some of the moral implications that occupied British authors writing during the Romantic period of the 19th century.