Seeing Through the End Time: From Lord Byron’s “Darkness” to The Dark Mountain Project

Authors

  • Jessica MacQueen University of Alberta

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5283/copas.246

Keywords:

darkness, ecocriticism, dark ecology, ecological thought, apocalypse, prophecy

Abstract

This essay contends with the dark side of environmental literature by examining Lord Byron’s apocalyptic poem “Darkness“ (1816) ecocritically, drawing on Timothy Morton’s concepts of dark ecology “and ecological thought“ to ask how darkness functions in Byron’s literary depiction of the end of days. Arguing that the poem moves beyond an elegy for nature to instead mourn the loss of community in crisis time, this essay points towards the unimaginable feminized future that the poem reaches blindly towards and concludes with a reference to contemporary ex-environmentalists The Dark Mountain Project who consider darkness the primary ecoaesthetic of their “uncivilized writing.“

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How to Cite

MacQueen, Jessica. “Seeing Through the End Time: From Lord Byron’s ‘Darkness’ to The Dark Mountain Project”. Current Objectives of Postgraduate American Studies, vol. 16, no. 2, Nov. 2015, doi:10.5283/copas.246.

Issue

Vol. 16 No. 2 (2015): The End as Enjambment

Section

Articles

License

Creative Commons License

Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work’s authorship and initial publication in this journal.