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On (Not) Hugging Trees: Affect, Emotion, and Ecology in Wordsworth’s “Nutting”
- Interdisciplinary Literary Studies
- Penn State University Press
- Volume 18, Number 2, 2016
- pp. 257-281
- Article
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abstract:
This article applies the insights of affect studies to William Wordsworth’s controversial “Nutting” (1800), a poem whose sudden shifts in tone fuel continued debate over its utility as a green text. Reading “Nutting” alongside another poem with the same title by John Clare, I argue that affect theory not only recasts the poem’s “ecological” potential but also expands possibilities for teaching “Nutting” and similarly ambiguous texts in an ecocritical context. Ultimately, I call upon ecocritics to embrace affect theory toward two ends: first, in order to redefine “green” art in more complex and nuanced terms; second, in order to expand environmentalism’s affective repertoire beyond apocalypticism.