Veganism and the Romantics Part 1: Communion with nature.

Welcome back! In the next few blog posts, I want to address the concept of veganism and vegetarianism in the Romantic period. This was a period where the movement gained some serious momentum and the writing of the time reflects a growing awareness of the importance of a plant based diet.  However, this importance rarely stemmed from a concern over health alone and there were several factors that played into changing opinions. To avoid cramming too much in all at once, I have decided to separate the information into three more easily digestible chunks:  Veganism and the Romantics Part 1: Communion with nature, Veganism and the Romantics Part 2: Battle against Consumerism and Veganism and the Romantics Part 3: The Representation of the Body.

A communion with nature is, undoubtedly, present throughout Romantic poetry. In particular, it is the emphasis on the importance of preserving nature that fuelled ideas about a plant-based diet. Moving away from the simple aesthetics of sublime landscapes and wild flowers, the preservation of animals as nature also applies. Although animal rights were nowhere near as prominent as they are today, several texts at the time addressed the issue of cruelty towards animals and this exposure was used as a kind of vegan/vegetarian propaganda.

One of these texts is ‘Badger’ by John Clare (http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/badger/). The poem is about a badger that is constantly ‘followed and hooted by [the] dogs and men’ and the animals suffering is documented right up until its brutal death:

‘He falls as dead and kicked by boys and men,
Then starts and grins and drives the crowd again; 
Till kicked and torn and beaten out he lies
And leaves his hold and cackles, groans, and dies’.

This imagery is graphic and the relentless violence towards the badger exposes the barbaric side of human nature. Unlike the badger, who is content to ‘root[s] in the bushes and the woods’, humans are shown as violent and essentially inharmonious with nature. It is this idea of harmony that made a vegan and vegetarian diet so popular among the Romantic poets and their readers; for one to appreciate nature and benefit from its pleasures, one had to be against its destruction.

Verified Vegan

"We can see quite plainly that our present civilisation is built on the exploitation of animals, just as past civilisations were built on the exploitation of slaves, and we believe the spiritual destiny of man is such that in time he will view with abhorrence the idea that men once fed on the products of animals' bodies"  Donald Watson, 1944 

The term ‘vegan’ is a relatively new one, coined in 1944 by a man named Donald Watson; it promotes the abstinence of all animal products. That means no: meat, fish, eggs, dairy, honey or any materials derived from the killing of animals such as silk or leather.

Veganism in modern society is looked upon as something of a cult; when I first found out about the movement several years ago I pictured dread-locked hippies dancing around fires, smearing fruit over each other’s faces and mating with goats. For some reason, that obviously appealed to me and I eventually made the transition myself.

Despite my pledge, I had never really taken the time to learn about the roots of veganism up until recently. What I thought was a modern food revolution had actually taken foundation years before, during the 18^th and 19^th centuries!

Spurred on by this discovery, I have started to dig deeper into the world of veganism and vegetarianism, especially focusing on their appearance and influence in literary texts. Several of these texts will be featured on this blog.