In Common Things : : Commerce, Culture, and Ecology in British Romantic Literature / / Matthew Rowney.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter EBOOK PACKAGE COMPLETE 2022 English
• VerfasserIn: Rowney, Matthew,
• Place / Publishing House: Toronto : : University of Toronto Press, , [2022]; ©2022
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (232 p.) :; 1 b&w illustration, 1 b&w table

The hardness of stone, the pliancy of wood, the fluidity of palm oil, the crystalline nature of salt, and the vegetable qualities of moss – each describes a way of being in and understanding the world. These substances are both natural objects hailed in Romantic literature and global commodities within a system of extraction and exchange that has driven climate change, representing the paradox of the modern relation to materiality. In Common Things examines these five common substances – stone, wood, oil, salt, and moss – in the literature of Romantic period authors, excavating their cultural, ecological, and commodity histories. The book argues that the substances and their histories have shaped cultural consciousness, and that Romantic era texts formally encode this shaping. Matthew Rowney draws together processes, beings, and things, both from the Romantic period and from our current ecological moment, to re-invoke a lost heritage of cultural relations with common substances. Enabling a fresh reading of Romantic literature, In Common Things prompts a reevaluation of the simple, the everyday, and the common, in light of their contributions to our contemporary sense of ourselves and our societies.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- IN COMMON THINGS -- Introduction -- 1 “The Bones of the World”: Mary Wollstonecraft’s Social Geology -- 2 Broken Arbour: Deforestation and the Cultural History of Trees in “The Ruined Cottage” -- 3 “Strange Look’d it There!”: The Paradox of the Palm in the Poetry of Felicia Hemans -- 4 Preserver and Destroyer: Salt in The History of Mary Prince -- 5 “Lin’d with Moss”: John Clare’s Rhizomatic Poetics -- Conclusion: Plastic Rime -- Notes -- Works Cited -- Index