Abstract: “Green Romanticism”, a burgeoning critical paradigm in English romanticism studies, takes issues with new historicist-new Marxist anthropomorphism and anti-materialism in theory, and focuses its critical attention on re-reading and recharging the Romantic canon in practice. The present paper opens with a brief analysis of Green Romanticism’s theoretical premises, which is followed by a case study of re-canonization of Wordsworth and the re-reading of Shelley by Bate and Morton respectively. In conclusion, the paper argues that the significance of “Green Romanticism” lies in enriching Romanticism studies and re-directing literary criticism from formalist textualism and ideological critique into a new social criticism.

Key words: Green Romanticism, eco-criticism, re-reading the canon, recharging the canon