Lydia Shaw

Biography	I recently completed my PhD at Durham University supervised by Professor Mark Sandy. My thesis refigures Byron and Shelley’s poetics in relation to current environmental discussions. I examine these Romantic poets’ engagements with, and treatment of, the Italian landscape primarily in the years 1816-1820, through a vision of interconnection, arguing that everything in the universe is connected and that the conceived divisions between human and nature are a falsity. This ecological vein offers a fresh perspective on the creative interplay and imaginative interaction between Byron and Shelley. I am the current recipient of The Byron Society PhD Bursary for the years 2022-3 and 2023-4. I am also research assistant to the editor of The BARS Review. Conference Papers The Shelley Conference (June 2024) Title: ‘And From The Waves, Sound Like Delight Broke Forth’: The Poetics of the Ocean and Human Potentiality in Shelley’s Julian and Maddalo Public Lecture for The Byron Society (June 2024) Title: Byron’s Arboreal Imagination The North East Forum in Eighteenth-Century and Romantic Studies (November 2023) Title: ‘Wild Reality’: Visionary Madness, Melancholy, and Ecology in Byron’s ‘Darkness’ BARS/NASSR New Romanticisms Conference (August 2022) Title: ‘A Noble Wreck’: Venice, Seascapes, Seasons and the Environment in Byron and Shelley Romantic Reputations Symposium (April 2021) Title: ‘The Weight of Earth Recoils Upon Us; - Let It Go!’: The Role of the Natural World in Byron and Shelley’s Posterity Publications Chapter in the Forthcoming Edited Collection 'Romantic Trees: The Literary Arboretum, 1740-1840', led by Dr Amanda Blake Davis and Dr Anna Burton. Teaching I have taught on the module 'Introduction to Poetry' at Durham University for two years now.

Biography

I recently completed my PhD at Durham University supervised by Professor Mark Sandy.

My thesis refigures Byron and Shelley’s poetics in relation to current environmental discussions. I examine these Romantic poets’ engagements with, and treatment of, the Italian landscape primarily in
the years 1816-1820, through a vision of interconnection, arguing that everything in the universe is connected and that the conceived divisions between human and nature are a falsity. This ecological vein
offers a fresh perspective on the creative interplay and imaginative interaction between Byron and Shelley.

I am the current recipient of The Byron Society PhD Bursary for the years 2022-3 and 2023-4. I am also research assistant to the editor of The BARS Review.

Conference Papers

The Shelley Conference (June 2024)
Title: ‘And From The Waves, Sound Like Delight Broke Forth’: The Poetics of the Ocean and Human Potentiality in Shelley’s Julian and Maddalo

Public Lecture for The Byron Society (June 2024)
Title: Byron’s Arboreal Imagination

The North East Forum in Eighteenth-Century and Romantic Studies (November 2023)
Title: ‘Wild Reality’: Visionary Madness, Melancholy, and Ecology in Byron’s ‘Darkness’
BARS/NASSR New Romanticisms Conference (August 2022)
Title: ‘A Noble Wreck’: Venice, Seascapes, Seasons and the Environment in Byron and Shelley

Romantic Reputations Symposium (April 2021)
Title: ‘The Weight of Earth Recoils Upon Us; - Let It Go!’: The Role of the Natural World in Byron and Shelley’s Posterity

Publications

Chapter in the Forthcoming Edited Collection 'Romantic Trees: The Literary Arboretum, 1740-1840', led by Dr Amanda Blake Davis and Dr Anna Burton.

Teaching

I have taught on the module 'Introduction to Poetry' at Durham University for two years now.