Dr. Dewey Hall Gives Brown Bag Talk at Huntington

Dr. Dewey Hall presented “Materialist Romanticism: Interstitial Ecology in Wordsworth's Verses Written in Goslar, 1798–1799” at The Huntington on Tuesday, August 15, 2023.

Unbeknownst to William Wordsworth, a few months before his arrival in Goslar in late 1798, a cataclysmic volcanic eruption occurred from June 8 till September 9, 1798 on Tenerife along the Canary Islands. The Pico-Viejo volcanic eruption spewed pumice, ash, and a sulfate cloud, reaching the lower atmosphere, which subsequently altered weather conditions in the Northern Hemisphere. Similar eruptions, such as Laki (1783–1784), Vesuvius (1794), and Tambora (1815), resulted in severe winter freezes, which have been measured nowadays by two scales: the Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI) (Simpkin et al., 1981) assessed the explosivity of historic eruptions; and the Dust Veil Index (DVI) (Lamb, 1970) estimated solar radiation depletion based on density, extent, and duration. Collectively, the eruptions represent intervals across time of what climatologists have called the “little ice age.”

Dr. Hall's talk examined the climactic effect of the Pico Viejo eruption on Tenerife, which induced the anomalous 1798–1799 winter chill in the Northern Hemisphere, by documenting records of severe river freezes, climatological studies, and firsthand observations. Together, the Pico Viejo eruption and weather created conditions by which Wordsworth remained housebound, inducing poetry about material objects evident in “Strange fits of passion” and “A slumber did my spirit seal.”