Romanticism and Ecology

English Romanticism first emerged as a literary movement from a heady combination of political revolution and cosmic optimism, nowhere better expressed than in William Wordsworth's famous lines on the French Revolution: "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, / But to be young was very heaven!" (1805 Prelude, book 10, lines 692-693). With the fall of the Bastille and the triumph of the Rights of Man, the possibilities of human liberation suddenly seemed limitless. And this dramatic revolutionary process was not confined to the realm of political institutions; all of human society was caught up in the sweep of revolutionary transformation. The unbounded liberation of human society was accompanied by a dawning realization of the interconnectedness between human beings and all other living things. The Rights of Man are only a staging-point along the road to the Rights of Animals, and this road in turn will lead eventually to the total liberation of all living things.