Affective ecology and the emotional archive of climate collapse in Lord Byron’s Darkness

This paper examines Lord Byron’s apocalyptic poem “Darkness” (1816) through affective ecology, exploring how metaphors express the emotional and psychological impact of environmental collapse. Composed after Mount Tambora’s eruption, which caused global climatic anomalies and “The Year Without a Summer,” the poem captures the atmospheric and emotional fallout. Drawing on Glenn Albrecht, Lawrence Buell, and Sara Ahmed, this study approaches affect not as an emotion but as an ecological condition shaped by environmental instability. Through close textual analysis, the paper investigates how the poem engages five core affective-ecological concepts: biophilia, naturalist intelligence, fascination, affiliation, and emotional bonds. It argues that “Darkness” provides poetic form to solastalgia, disorientation, and ecological despair. Employing a qualitative, interdisciplinary approach combining affect theory, ecocriticism, and Romantic studies, the study contends that Byron’s poem functions as a creative response to ecological trauma and an archive of emotional distress rooted in environmental crisis. Rather than reading “Darkness” solely as an apocalyptic Romantic vision, the study reinterprets it as an early literary record of emotional collapse in response to climate change. The findings highlight Byron’s relevance to contemporary eco-anxiety and illustrate how Romantic poetry can be re-evaluated as a conduit for ecological and emotional witness in the Anthropocene.