Overview

Romanticism is often reduced to nostalgic pastoralism and solitary contemplation of the sublime. But a radical strand of Romantic writers and thinkers offered sweeping political, ecological, and religious critiques of capitalism, racism, settler colonialism, and environmental destruction. Interweaving canonical nineteenth-century authors with Black and Indigenous thinkers who transformed their work, this book is a bold new account of Romanticism for today's deeply entrenched crises. Mark S. Cladis examines the progressive democratic, religious, and environmental beliefs and practices that informed European Romantic literature and its sustained legacies in North America. His interpretation interweaves diverse voices such as W. E. B. Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, and Leslie Marmon Silko while also revealing the progressive visions of Romantic authors such as Rousseau, William and Dorothy Wordsworth, Coleridge, Mary Shelley, Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller. Forging connections among literary and philosophical traditions while closely reading a wide range of texts, Radical Romanticism shows how storytelling is central to the pursuit of justice and flourishing for the human and the more-than-human worlds. Bringing together environmental humanities, literary theory, political theory, and religious studies, this book makes the case for a renewed radical Romanticism, offering urgent resources for a world beset by catastrophe, uncertainty, and despair.

Full Product Details

Author:   Mark S. Cladis (Brown University)
Publisher:   Columbia University Press
Imprint:   Columbia University Press
ISBN:  

9780231213325

ISBN 10:   0231213328
Pages:   384
Publication Date:   16 September 2025
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
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Table of Contents

Preface; Or, How I Came to Write This Book and What Lies at Its Heart Introduction 1. Radical Romantic Aesthetics: Wordsworth and Du Bois 2. Into the Wild: Environmental and Racial Justice in Wordsworth, Thoreau, and Du Bois 3. Rousseau’s Garden as a World in Which to Live 4. Romanticism, Religion, and Practice: Political and Environmental Implications 5. Dancing on a Flaming World: Du Bois’s Poetry and Creative Fiction 6. Ecofeminism and the Expansion and Transformation of Radical Romanticism 7. Leslie Marmon Silko and the Power of Indigenous Storytelling: Healing and Resistance in Defiance of Settler Colonialism Conclusion: The Work and Promise of Radical Romanticism in a World in Ruins Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index

Reviews

In Radical Romanticism, Mark Cladis offers an energetic new approach to the Romantic literary tradition, meticulously defining and exemplifying what radical Romanticism is, how it works stylistically in an impressively eclectic body of trans-Atlantic and trans-historical literature, and why it matters to recognize this tradition. -- Scott Slovic, coeditor of <i>Nature and Literary Studies</i>

Author Information

Mark S. Cladis is the Brooke Russell Astor Professor of the Humanities at Brown University, where he is a faculty member in the Department of Religious Studies, the Center for Environmental Humanities, and the Native American and Indigenous Studies Initiative.

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