Tampering with Nature: 'Eco-crime' in S.T. Coleridge’s "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and G.G. Byron’s Manfred

The relationship between ‘the human’ and nature has always been understood as a highly complex one. This dissertation opens with an introductory section analysing the philosophy behind the unstable link between these two categories. Focussing on cultural views of how humans look to nature as a source of norms for human conduct, this introduction provides an insight into how humans seek values in nature but also commit violent acts towards the natural world. Drawing from the ecocritical tradition started by Bate with his study The Song of the Earth (2000), there will follow a section on English Romanticism, analysing the impact of the Industrial and French revolutions, including the changes which affected the British landscape. There follows an ecocritical reading of the crime against nature in S.T. Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (1798) and G. G. Byron’s Manfred (1817). Bate has described the presence of humans in the natural world as alien, with literature itself being seen as an act of severance from the surrounding environment and, therefore, a crime against nature. Both texts present Promethean characters in a dark quest to tamper with nature; Coleridge’s Rime presents the poet’s fascination with the supernatural aesthetic, introducing the figure of a Promethean sailor who commits ecocide out of spite for God’s creatures in a poem acting as an ecological allegory and cautionary tale. Byron’s literary production displays deep ecological awareness as well. A commentary on the historical and ecological context of “Darkness,” and the concept of apocalypse, lays the scene for an ecocritical reading of Manfred. With clear autobiographical references, Byron’s dramatic poem presents both a moral and religious ‘eco-crime,’ as the main character is involved in an incestuous relationship and manages to evoke spirits. Manfred plays the part of a god, consequently renouncing a Christian divinity. Coleridge’s “Rime” and Byron’s Manfred, while dealing with different instances of eco-crime, represent an opportunity to further investigate the (criminal) relationship between nature and the realm of the human, and to open the debate to more recent developments of the ‘crime against nature’ trope.