Wordsworth and the Poetics of Air

Presents an ecocritical study of poetic atmosphere, a concept first developed through Romanticism, particularly in the poetry of William Wordsworth.

Thomas H. Ford (Author)

9781108441032, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 25 June 2020

288 pages, 6 b/w illus.
23 x 15 x 2 cm, 0.43 kg

'… 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, The Wordsworth Circle

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.

1. Atmospheric Romanticism
2. Atmospheric mediation
3. Romantic meteorology
4. Atmospheric aesthetics
5. In the breathing chamber: 'lines written a few miles above'.

Subject Areas: The environment [RN], Literature: history & criticism [DS], Poetry by individual poets [DCF]