Timothy Morton. The Ecological Thought (Book Review‪)‬

Timothy Morton. The Ecological Thought. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010. Pp. 163. $39.95. Reviewing Timothy Morton's new book for readers of this journal presents a particular challenge. Although Morton's scholarship has contributed much to Romantic studies, his most recent work is not primarily, or even secondarily, a contribution to the study of Romanticism. Although it contains suggestive readings of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and "Old Man Travelling," as well as passing references to Kantian aesthetics and Shelley's politics and poetics, it may more properly be understood as a Romanticist's response to environmental catastrophe. Not a Romantic response, it should be stressed, for Morton is concerned here, as he was in his last book Ecology Without Nature (Harvard, 2007, to which this book is an ostensible "prequel"), to purge environmentalism of many of the bad habits inherited from Romanticism so as to construct a postmodern ecological ethics more proper to our present condition. Yet, for scholars of Romanticism, this project has much to teach, both for Morton's insistence upon a public and ethical role for literary criticism and for his demonstration of just how difficult Romantic habits of mind are to escape.