ABSTRACT
In our current geological age of the Anthropocene with its accelerating environmental challenges Romantic dreams of wholesome nature seem more distant than ever. Yet this chapter suggests that Romantic literature, while not posing solutions to accelerating environmental dilemmas, contributes relevant insights to the challenges at hand. I chart two qualities that make Romantic enquiries timely for environmental debates: first, an openness and mixing of genres that provides new impetus to established and predetermined narrative modes; second, a fluidity of boundaries between humans and nature that permeates Romantic thought and reflects some of the insights of recent theories on material ecocriticism. Specifically, I draw on Ludwig Tieck’s Rune Mountain (Der Runenberg, 1804) as an example to probe Romantic notions of nature in a time of ecological crisis. Tieck depicts how the physical landscape enters and alters human consciousness, but his protagonist Christian also misses crucial opportunities to contemplate and negotiate the places he inhabits. Reaching beyond Romantic escapism, Rune Mountain therefore draws our attention to the hypocrisy of human hubris and the necessity of coping with an unstable, volatile, and unpredictable world in the Anthropocene.
