Beyond Romantic Ecocriticism / Nineteenth-Century Major Lives and Letters (PDF)

the future of environmentalism." - NBOL-19

"Nichols offers a subtle, but significant new way of understanding many of the central debates in the nineteenth century, most notably around evolution, species, and extinction, and how they relate to pressing global concerns. It is this sense of intextricability between the human and the natural that Nichols tries to capture in the word 'urbanature.;" - Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies

"Both critically and artfully, Nichols explores how our conceptions of nature have derived from Enlightenment-era ideas (humans and nature are separate) and Romantic poetry (humans and nature are connected). Relying heavily on poetic examples, Nichols also envisions an 'urbanatural' future in which we see ourselves as part of the earth, but without a sense of atavism or regression, and how our environments will shift accordingly." - Sierra

"Nichols offers a provocative new approach to understanding the role of humankind in a post-natural, post-industrial world. Grounded in a perceptive reading of Romantic natural history, this book moves beyond the conventional nature-versus-culture dichotomy toward a more inclusive concept of urbanatural roosting. Along the way, Nichols makes important contributions to our scholarly understanding of British Romantic poetry, American environmentalism, and the history of science." - James C. McKusick, author of Green Writing: Romanticism and Ecology

"Ambitious, learned, experimental, and thoroughly readable, Beyond Romantic Ecocriticism posits 'urbanatural roosting' as a vital twenty-first-century mode of ecological thinking. Perhaps this is what the Chinese might call the 'tian ren he yi' (the harmonious unity of the universe and man) of the new millennium. An inspired (and inspiring) book!" - Scott Slovic, editor of ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment

"Part lyrical memoir, part literary and cultural history, part philosophical meditation, Nichols compelling new book is above all an eloquent, erudite, and impassioned manifesto for a new way of thinking, writing, and living more self-consciously, equitably, and sustainably on this earth. Stressing both the historicity of wilderness and the naturality of the city, Nichols envisages the collaboration of scientific knowledge, urban design and the artistic imagination in the crafting of thriving ecomorphic townscapes as part of a wider practice of sharing and caring for all of earth s diverse, yet all more or less humanized places and spaces." - Kate Rigby, Monash University and author of Topographies of the Sacred: The Poetics of Place in European Romanticism