Romantic Elements: Rocks, and Stones, and Soil, 1750–1850 Symposium at The University of Manchester, 25–26 June, 2026
Dreams hang on every leaf: unearthly forms
Glide through the gloom; and mystic visions swim
Before the cheated sense. – Anna Letitia Barbauld, ‘To Mr. C[oleridge]’
Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course,
With rocks, and stones, and trees. – William Wordsworth, ‘A slumber did my spirit seal’
Mont Blanc appears—still, snow, and serene;
Its subject mountains their unearthly forms
Pile around it, ice and rock; … – Percy Bysshe Shelley, ‘Mont Blanc’
Keynote Speakers
Dr Jeremy Davies (University of Leeds)
Dr Stephanie O’Rourke (University of St Andrews)
Romantic-era writing is littered with stones, as Noah Heringman brilliantly demonstrated in his influential Romantic Rocks, Aesthetic Geology over twenty years ago. Whether they offer a source of deep-time wonderment, as in Wordsworth’s ‘Resolution and Independence’, a playful disruption of subject–object distinctions, as in Blake’s ‘The Clod and the Pebble’, or an analogy between geological and political revolutions for poems such as Charlotte Smith’s ‘Beachy Head’, rocks in the Romantic era are less stable surfaces than they are porous substances: sublime, strange, and open to inquiry.
Earth and earthiness are ubiquitous in the period’s many modes of nature writing, but elements of the ground do not flow or yield their depths like water, nor mediate like air. Earth as physical entity obscures, obstructs, and sullies, proving a less tractable ground for what we might still think of as defining Romantic-era postures of idealism and spontaneity. What literary forms, what knowledge practices, does earthly matter press poetics into? Is the geological record hostile to the human and human expression in its radical alterity, as Heringman at times suggests? Or are there underground places of passage, sympathy, even love, as Mary Jacobus, Susan Wolfson, and Tristram Wolff have more recently proposed? Is there a whole spectrum of attachments to rocks and stones, amounting to (in Wolff’s phrase) a ‘gray romanticism’, in which writers can both resist and relish digging in the dirt?
‘Romantic Elements: Rocks, and Stones, and Soil, 1750–1850’ aims to explore these questions. We seek to go beyond the exhilarating stony subjects of mountains, deep time, and fossils, widening the remit of Romantic-era writing about the earth to include more particulate matter and more conceptual treatments. We want to add soil, dirt, dust, sand, and ashes to the Wordsworthian catalogue of Romantic elements; and we want to expand our theoretical and metaphoric range to excavate the implications of Barbauld’s and Shelley’s ‘unearthly forms’.
We invite proposals for 20-minute papers on the theme of earth, unearthing, and the unearthly in Romantic-era poetry and prose (1750–1850). When engaging with the theme, prospective speakers may wish to explore topics such as the following:
- Earth, earthiness, and literary form/genre
- The subterranean/undercommons
- The components of earth: mud, soil, clods, dust, sand
- Earthy elements as sites of affect or criticality
- Poetic and/or epistemological obscurity
- Images or forms of burial and concealment
- Images or forms of unearthing, unveiling, or revelation
- Earth as generative, fertile, life-giving
- Earth as a site of labour and resource extraction
- Earth as gendered, queered/queering, racialized, classed
- Formalist, ecocritical, queer, and affective approaches to earth, earthiness, and unearthing
Please send proposals for 20-minute papers in the form of a 250-word abstract and an author biography (150 words) to James Metcalf (james.metcalf@manchester.ac.uk) and Millie Schurch (millie.schurch@english.su.se) by Friday 30 January 2026.
Please note: this will be an in-person meeting only. With thanks to support from the Swedish Research Council, there will be no conference fee for speakers, other than to attend the optional conference dinner at the end of the first day. Food and refreshments will be provided on both days (coffee and pastries; lunch; tea-break snack).
We are particularly keen to encourage the participation of early career researchers and scholars on precarious employment contracts. We are pleased to be able to offer up to 10 bursaries to cover accommodation and travel within the UK for those without access to institutional support for research activities. Please indicate with your abstract submission if you do not have access to institutional financial support and would like to be considered for a bursary.
We hope to hear from you!
Millie and James
