Abstract
Dorothy Wordsworth's infrequently-cited poem, “Loving & Liking,” offers a theory of love as an ethical relation to human and nonhuman others. This essay reads the poem with passages from the Alfoxden and Grasmere journals, exploring the various ways in which Wordsworth is responsive to objects and things that seem to distinguish themselves to her, standing out from their surroundings to catch her attention as individuals worthy of careful and extended engagement. Through the terms of this engagement, a tree is not simply an elm tree but what she calls “a creature by its own self”; a waterfall not only stands “upright by itself,” but also is “its own self.” Drawing on the work of Donna Haraway, this essay identifies these objects and things in Wordsworth's work as “significant others.” Bringing the aesthetic and natural historical discourses of the Romantic period into conversation with current post-humanist and ecocritical ones, this essay explores the role of a special form of description in Dorothy's relationships to nonhuman others.
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