NATURE AS AGENCY: A COMPARATIVE ECOCRITICAL STUDY OF SELECTED WORKS OF WORDSWORTH AND COLERIDGE

Deepak

doi:10.29121/shodhgyan.v4.i1.2026.130

Authors

Deepak M.A (English), NET, India

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.29121/shodhgyan.v4.i1.2026.130

Keywords:

Ecocriticism, Romantic Poetry, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Nature As Agency, New Materialism, Anthropocene, Environmental Humanities, Lyrical Ballads, Ecological Consciousness

Abstract [English]

Taking the approach of a comparative ecocritical study, this paper compares and contrasts the ways in which the two poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge represent nature not only as a silent, uncommunicative background to humanity, but as an active participant in and participant to human life, an ontological being with its own capacity to communicate. This study draws on the theories of first-wave and second-wave ecocriticism, new materialism and actor-network theory, suggesting that although Wordsworth and Coleridge were philosophically different, they share an understanding of nature as a dynamic entity which influences the consciousness, moral frameworks and spiritual experiences of humans. The paper examines the development of both poets' ecological philosophies from their shared experiments in Lyrical Ballads (1798) to their later mature poems, and how their own ideas of natural agency prefigure modern ecological philosophy. This essay explores the ways in which Wordsworth and Coleridge's poetry, as part of the Romantic movement, constructs a picture of nature as agent, and investigates the implications of their work for both the new materialism and the Anthropocene. This essay examines the ways in which Wordsworth's and Coleridge's poetry, as part of the Romantic movement, imagines nature as an agent, and examines the implications of this for the new materialism and the Anthropocene.

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