‘Our Mix'd Essence’: Manfred 's Ecological Turn

Abstract

Staging Manfred's strict dualist epistemology allows Byron to think against the grain of Western philosophy's ontology of Man v Nature. Rather than celebrating a Promethean transcendence, the play works toward affirmation of humanity's 'mix'd essence '; a rela- tional ontology of man-nature interdependence that underpins Byron's view of human society as the evolved product of specific natural environments, a theory of cultural ecol- ogy that informs most of his writing. For over a century, critics have cited Manfred in speculations about Byron's attitude toward nature, but most have concluded that Byron was antagonistic to nature philos- ophy. Thus Ernest J. Lovell, in his 1949 Byron: The Record of a Quest, proposed that Manfred, like all Byronic heroes, cannot feel nature 's tranquil restoration because of