Nature Embraced: An Ecocritical Approach to the Study of Selected Poems by P.B. Shelley

Abstract

Trying an analytical article from the Eco critical perspective is by no means an easy task especially its theoretical part since the term 'Eco critical' itself is a complicated concept to cover, let alone its still burgeoning status which demands close and continuous follow-up of the latest studies about the topic. Yet it is, simultaneously, an interesting task that firstly enlightens its writer about the significance of nature, and secondly it clears the path for future studies about the topic. The article tries to study some Romantic poems through the lens of ecocriticism because it hypothizes that some significant resemblance could be found between the purposes of the poems- and by extension their writers- on the one hand and Eco criticism as a theory or approach on the other hand. The study also refers in critical expressions, to such fields as environmental studies, green studies, and ecological studies, since they are connected in one way or another to the Eco critical approach. It covers three poems by the second generation Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) from an Eco critical perspective and at the end, reaches some conclusions the most obvious one being that, though lived and wrote much earlier to the environmental and Eco critical studies, his ideas and beliefs which are expressed in the studied poems reflect, to a great extent, what those studies about nature and the universe call for. The article is concluded with the list of works cited.