Italy and British Romanticism: Human-Nonhuman Conversations

The article discusses the benefits to be derived, in Romantic studies, from an intersection of the methods and approaches of geo-criticism and eco-criticism. In light of recent eco-critical questionings of the bifurcation of nature and culture in favour of their inextricability and co-dependence, this contribution stresses the importance of considering the geographical specificities of Romantic-era engagements with ecosystems, and, more precisely, how such engagements were bound up with geo-political and geo-cultural concerns. In particular, this article proposes methodological intersections of geo- and eco-criticism as a means of shedding new light on how Romantic-period representations of Italy problematize the interconnections between the country’s diversified natural environments and its cultural, political and economic dimensions.