Grounds of Knowledge: Unofficial Epistemologies of British Environmental Writing, 1745-1835.

Abstract

British literature from the mid-eighteenth to mid-nineteenth centuries has long been important to critical investigations centered on ecology and environmentalism. Ecocritical explorations of this literature, however, often look through texts to the plants, animals, and environments they represent, bypassing important questions about the act of representation itself. Resisting the temptation to take literary representations of the environment at face value, this dissertation moves the focus away from what written representations of the environment say about it to how those representations are made. Through a combination of close reading and examination of works in light of the literary critical and scientific ideals of their moment, I investigate the epistemological beliefs held by individuals and communities of authors about how knowledge is absorbed by the mind, what standards of documentation are necessary for its transmission in a written text, and which proofs of authenticity are required for it to be accepted as legitimate. Grounds of Knowledge discusses both literary and practical texts from the mid-1740s to the mid-1830s, including the works of William Collins, Joseph Warton, Thomas Warton, Charlotte Smith, John Clare, Jane Austen, and the agriculturalists Arthur Young, William Marshall, and William Cobbett. As these authors portray the environment in both literary and practical works, I argue, they use representational methods that are based on epistemological ideals as well as aesthetic and practical considerations. In each case, their works are governed by “unofficial” epistemologies—philosophies of collecting, apprehending, and disseminating knowledge that are implicit in written works and exist independent of academic and professional philosophy. By focusing on the epistemology of representation, this dissertation fills a gap left open by traditional thematic ecocriticism as well as more recent ontologically-based forms of ecocriticism. It does not seek to undermine the ecocritical project but rather to provide a much-needed foundation for ecocritical investigation in understanding how and why British authors of the mid-eighteenth to mid-nineteenth centuries represented the environment in their works.