Geo & Eco Criticism - Returning to Romantic Italy

21 Aprile 2021, ore 18:00.

Link per rivedere l'evento: https://www.bars.ac.uk/blog/?p=3637

Link: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/geo-eco-criticism-returning-to-romantic-italy-tickets-131867450093

Our roundtable aims to open up a discussion about the benefits to be derived, in Romantic studies, from an intersection of the methods and approaches of geo-criticism and eco-criticism. On the one hand, we take our bearings from positions, such as Kate Rigby’s, that focus on the natural world as a dynamic, active dimension enabling all cultural production, which in turn bears traces of its more-than-human genesis. On the other, we intend to suggest that geo-criticism, as developed by Bertrand Westphal and others, stresses the crucial importance of considering the geographical specificities of Romantic-era engagements with ecosystems, and more particularly how such engagements are inextricably bound up with notions of geo-politics and geo-culture (the nation, borders and boundaries, economic geographies, north vs south, the national character). Indeed, geo-criticism opens us specific insights into how literature can translate the experience of places into a critique of predominant modes of construction of reality.

Since the notions of space and place are constantly shifting (the former encompassing conceptual space and the latter factual place), authors such as William Wordsworth, Lord Byron, Percy B. Shelley, Mary Shelley and Leigh Hunt among many others, represent environments as manifesting the variety of interconnected human and non-human spaces, and their im/material valences, in ways that are also always tied up with the political, economic or cultural forces bearing upon and conditioning such spaces (which, following Henri Lefebvre, may be viewed as intersections of perceived, conceived and lived space).

Exploring the possibilities of combining ecocritical and geocritical approaches, the roundtable aims to propose this methodological intersection as a way of unlocking new features of Romantic-period treatments of the connections between the environment and humans, their identities, activities, and institutions [Tuan, Yi-fu, Space and Place]. We believe that our approach may prove interesting to a wide audience by throwing light on Romantic representations of the environment as critical narratives (and counter-narratives) about the imbrications and overlappings of the identities of individuals, human communities and polities, and the environment. In particular, we aim to discuss the potential advantages of this mixed approach by throwing new light on Romantic-period representations of Italy as a particularly complex and unstable crucible of issues of nature and nurture, ecosystems and political systems, environment and polities, and so on. In Romantic-period literature, the highly diversified and challenging natural world of Italy – from the Alps to Vesuvius and Etna, its frayed coastlines, Northern plains, Venetian lagoon, Roman marshes, Campanian sulphur lakes, etc. – is everywhere enmeshed with the country’s complicated, fragmented and fraught cultural, political and economic context. Our aim is ultimately to stimulate a lively debate on how ecocritical and geocritical outlooks can be made to interact in order to identify new and exciting ways of capturing the multifaceted complexity of Romantic-period representations of human-environmental interrelations.

Speakers and topics covered:

Serena Baiesi (University of Bologna) - Leigh Hunt’s Italian Green footsteps 

Paolo Bugliani (University of Pisa – ECR) - William Hazlitt’s Italian Spots of Time 

Lilla Maria Crisafulli (University of Bologna) - Going Green and Blue in Mary Shelley’s work 

Diego Saglia (University of Parma) - Re-Viewing Northern Italy 

Elena Spandri (University of Siena) - Wordsworth’s Franciscan Ecology