#my final chapter is just about romantic apocalypses <3 cheerful stuff

[lesamis]

hi lilli! sorry if you've answered this before but i was curious, what is your phd actually about? does byron show up in it?

hi anon! i don't think anyone's ever asked, no worries :') i'm researching the ways in which british colonial developments around 1800 - especially slavery, abolition and the consolidation of british rule in bengal - influenced the affective perception of time in romantic writing. what i'm essentially trying to argue is that the romantic age tended to trap people in this very odd tension between utopian expectation (we're liberators! we're reformers! we're bringing liberty and reform to the entire world!) and existential anxiety (every empire we identify with has eventually fallen! people are starving! we're chopping down all these trees to build war ships! the end is here!). imperial expansion at this time inspired a lot of enthusiasm, and a massive sense of precarity. i'm interested in how those two interact.

byron might show up in it! :D or, like, he almost definitely will. he had a lot to say about disaster.