Romantic Ecocriticism Lately

This article surveys studies in Romanticism over the course of the last decade, focusing particularly on work that engages what might loosely be called ecological concerns. In contrast to standard accounts of “ecocriticism,” however, it holds that the most generative work being done in this field and, with these interests at heart, is not explicitly ecocritical. Instead, the article finds in the rhetorically attentive contributions of Romanticist scholars a kind of by‐the‐way environmentalism that remains admirably cautious about the consequences of a literary criticism deemed activist in and of itself. Building on Merleau‐Ponty's concept of the phantom limb, and on Veronica Forrest‐Thomson's critique of reflexively “naturalized” and mimetic interpretations of poetic texts, the discussion groups together critics who adopt and develop what I refer to as a phenomenological formalism. It then pursues the ramifications of this disciplinary turn in very recent works of scholarship situated in the 18th century and Romantic period.