Table of Contents

Introduction: Romanticism, Capitalism, and Ecology 1. William Bartram’s Travels and Romantic Environmentalism 2. Thomas Cole, Painter-Prophet of Ecological Disaster 3. William Morris’s Romantic Ecological Utopia 4. Walter Benjamin Against the "Murder" of Nature 5. Raymond Williams : Romantic Culture and Socialist Ecology 6. Naomi Klein, Twenty-First Century Climate Warrior Conclusion

About the Author

Robert Sayre is Professor Emeritus of English and American Literature and Civilization at the University of Paris East, Marne-la-Vallée, France.

Michael Löwy is Emeritus Research Director in Sociology at the Centre nationale de la recherche scientifique, Paris, France.

Reviews

"Right out of the gate, Romantic Anti-Capitalism and Nature is a book that pulsates with deep historical knowledge, intelligence, and acumen. Löwy and Sayre are not only creative and ground-breaking in their repositioning of the world-view of Romantic anti-capitalism to address unconventional cultural forms and historical eras. They have also produced an uncanny work of historical reconstruction that renders this cultural protest against bourgeois civilization engrossing, revelatory, inspiring, and diagnostically acute to the ecological crises of our own time."
Alan Wald, H. Chandler Davis Collegiate Professor Emeritus, University of Michigan "Romantic anti-capitalist culture has shadowed the entire development of capitalism since the Industrial Revolution, reminding us of a world lost, but also of a world still to be gained. Sayre and Lövy bring this historic tradition into the light, showing how the great Romantic critics of capitalism were not simply backward-looking, but sought the inversion of the system, turning to the past and to pre-captialist nature in order to develop new means of transcending the present and re-imagining the future. The powerful Romantic critique of capitalism unearthed in this book is essential to all of our efforts to overcome the widening existential crises of our time."
John Bellamy Foster, author of Marx’s Ecology and The Return of Nature: Socialism and Ecology"For many years Löwy and Sayre have been arguing that romanticism is an essential component of effective anti-capitalism. In this new collection of essays on figures ranging from the eighteenth-century naturalist William Bartram to Naomi Klein, they propose that romantic critique at its most profound was always ecological in nature. This is a timely contribution to debates on the crisis of our age."
Andrew Hemingway, Professor Emeritus in History of Art, University College London"To gather these six heterogeneous and widely separated artists and writers together under the rubric of Romanticism was a good idea, and to bring out their anti-capitalism and pro-environmentalism an even better one. Setting Bartram beside Morris, or Benjamin beside Klein, helps us to think more usefully about each of them, and to see something of a tradition that is still alive. And we may need this tradition to help us keep the planet alive."
Michael Ferber, Professor Emeritus, University of New Hampshire"This fascinating and ambitious book shows how the long lineage of Romantic thinking about nature is vitally important for contesting the current scale and extent of environmental destruction globally. It is a significant and original revision of how we understand this major historical period and its claims on the present."
Thomas H. Ford, Lecturer in English, La Trobe University