Article ID: CBB694766507

Tennyson’s Wrinkled Feet: Ageing and the Poetics of Decay (2021)

unapi

This article argues that Tennyson’s ‘Tithonus’ (1860) draws together ageing and decay through the poem’s formal wrinkling: moments where metrical disruption, folding, slackness, or concealment correspond to the insights derived from the perspective of great age — chiming the poet’s keynotes of disappointment, mourning, and loss. I turn to ‘Ulysses’ (1842) and ‘The Lotos-Eaters’ (1832) — poems with a similar, though differently stressed, investment in age and decay — to demonstrate the political stakes of this thesis. While for Ulysses old age presents the triumphant opportunity to live ‘Life to the lees’, this arises from a sense of masculine anxiety about imminent decay. ‘The Lotos-Eaters’ positions ageing and decay against the imperative to work as a means of decentring the monolithic temporality of capitalist utility. These poems theorize the poetics of rot as a senescent challenge to the masculine and capitalist assumptions about the inherent value of mastery, productivity, and vigour.

...More
Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB694766507/

Similar Citations

Chapter Stott, Rebecca; (2013)
“Tennyson's Drift”: Evolution in “The Princess”

Chapter Purton, Valerie; (2013)
Darwin, Tennyson and the Writing of “The Holy Grail”

Book Purton, Valerie; (2013)
Darwin, Tennyson and Their Readers: Explorations in Victorian Literature and Science

Thesis Shearer, Emily Carroll; (2014)
“Our Little Systems Have Their Day”: Tennyson's Poetic Treatment of Science

Article Sara Zadrozny; (2021)
Of Cosmetic Value Only: Make-Up and Terrible Old Ladies in Victorian Literature

Chapter Nys, Michiel; (2013)
“An Undue Simplification”: Tennyson's Evolutionary Afterlife

Chapter Ebbatson, Roger; (2013)
Tennyson's “Locksley Hall”: Progress and Destitution

Article Sanders, Mike; (2000)
Manufacturing accident: Industrialism and the worker's body in early Victorian fiction

Book James F. Stark; (2020)
The Cult of Youth: Anti-Ageing in Modern Britain

Article Ritch, Alistair; (2014)
English Poor Law Institutional Care for Older People: Identifying the `Aged and Infirm' and the `Sick' in Birmingham Workhouse, 1852--1912

Article Rachel Faulkner-Gurstein; David Wyatt; (2023)
Platform NHS: Reconfiguring a Public Service in the Age of Digital Capitalism

Chapter Beer, Gillian; (2013)
Systems and Extravagance: Darwin, Meredith, Tennyson

Book John Troyer; (2020)
Technologies of the Human Corpse

Article Victoria M. Nagy; Alana J. Piper; (2020)
The Health and Medical Needs of Victoria's Older Female Prisoners, 1860–1920

Book Peter N. Stearns; (2020)
The Routledge History of Death since 1800

Chapter Rowlinson, Matthew; (2013)
History, Materiality and Type in Tennyson's “In Memoriam”

Book Henchman, Anna; (2014)
The Starry Sky Within: Astronomy and the Reach of the Mind in Victorian Literature

Thesis Henchman, Anna Alexandra; (2004)
Astronomy and the Problem of Perception in British Literature, 1830--1910

Article Mila Daskalova; (2021)
Printing as Poison, Printing as Cure: Work and Health in the Nineteenth-Century Printing Office and Asylum

Article Gavin Wright; (2020)
Slavery and Anglo-American capitalism revisited

Authors & Contributors
Purton, Valerie
Beer, Gillian
Henchman, Anna Alexandra
Rowlinson, Matthew
Sanders, Mike
Stark, James F.
Journals
19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century
Book History
Economic History Review
Health and History
Science, Technology, and Human Values
Social History of Medicine
Publishers
Harvard University
Cambridge University Press
Anthem Press
MIT Press
Oxford University Press
Routledge
Concepts
Science and literature
Poetry and poetics
Medicine and society
Aging
Labor and laborers
Evolution
People
Tennyson, Alfred, Lord
Darwin, Charles Robert
Eliot, George
Hardy, Thomas
Meredith, George
Chambers, Robert
Time Periods
19th century
20th century, early
21st century
20th century
Modern
Places
Great Britain
Australia
United States
Birmingham (England)
Institutions
National Health Service (Great Britain)
Royal Society of London
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment