Pre-Industrial Climate Anxiety: Environmental Uncertainty in British Romantic Poetry

Peer-Reviewed
The Criterion

The Criterion: An International Journal in English ISSN: 0976-8165

Open Access

British Literature

Pre-Industrial Climate Anxiety: Environmental Uncertainty in British Romantic Poetry

Ujjal Mandal
Volume / Issue
Vol. 17, Issue 1 · February 2026

Pages
736-752

Article ID
2026V17N1073

Abstract

British Romantic poetry has been studied through the lens of natural beauty, artistic creation and rural harmony. And such readings imply that nature is the source of consolation, aesthetic pleasure, and moral principles. But this paper encapsulates fear, storm, decay, environmental instability, anxiety about nature and the pre-industrial climate anxiety which remain unexplored. This study also recaps romantic poetry exploring how poets of the age responded to unusual weather, rural environmental changes, and uncertainties and all are experienced through a sense of ecological discomfort or unease. The present paper also employs climate anxiety theory, cultural materialism as the core to exposure. It goes beyond the conventional pastoral studies and rejuvenating dispraised ecological voices, and how atmospheric disorder, silence, decay and fear function as the expressions of proto-form of climate anxiety.

Keywords

Climate anxietyRomantic poetryRomantic ecocriticismWeather traumaEcological melancholy.

Article History

Received
26-01-2026
Accepted
11 February 2026
Published Online
3 February 2026

How to Cite

Ujjal Mandal. “Pre-Industrial Climate Anxiety: Environmental Uncertainty in British Romantic Poetry.” The Criterion: An International Journal in English, vol. 17, no. 1, Feb. 2026, pp. 736-752. ISSN: 0976-8165. DOI: https://doi.org/10.66376/criterion.v17.n1.50

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