Jewusiak, Jacob (Author)
19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century
Volume: 2021
Issue: 32
Pages: 21
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.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Chapter
Stott, Rebecca;
(2013)
“Tennyson's Drift”: Evolution in “The Princess”
(/isis/citation/CBB001422072/)
Thesis
Shearer, Emily Carroll;
(2014)
“Our Little Systems Have Their Day”: Tennyson's Poetic Treatment of Science
(/isis/citation/CBB001567592/)
Book
Purton, Valerie;
(2013)
Darwin, Tennyson and Their Readers: Explorations in Victorian Literature and Science
(/isis/citation/CBB001421851/)
Chapter
Purton, Valerie;
(2013)
Darwin, Tennyson and the Writing of “The Holy Grail”
(/isis/citation/CBB001422074/)
Article
Sara Zadrozny;
(2021)
Of Cosmetic Value Only: Make-Up and Terrible Old Ladies in Victorian Literature
(/isis/citation/CBB388592897/)
Article
Sanders, Mike;
(2000)
Manufacturing accident: Industrialism and the worker's body in early Victorian fiction
(/isis/citation/CBB000111798/)
Chapter
Nys, Michiel;
(2013)
“An Undue Simplification”: Tennyson's Evolutionary Afterlife
(/isis/citation/CBB001422075/)
Chapter
Ebbatson, Roger;
(2013)
Tennyson's “Locksley Hall”: Progress and Destitution
(/isis/citation/CBB001422071/)
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
(/isis/citation/CBB001550844/)
Chapter
Rowlinson, Matthew;
(2013)
History, Materiality and Type in Tennyson's “In Memoriam”
(/isis/citation/CBB001422073/)
Book
James F. Stark;
(2020)
The Cult of Youth: Anti-Ageing in Modern Britain
(/isis/citation/CBB600996331/)
Book
Peter N. Stearns;
(2020)
The Routledge History of Death since 1800
(/isis/citation/CBB965518317/)
Thesis
Henchman, Anna Alexandra;
(2004)
Astronomy and the Problem of Perception in British Literature, 1830--1910
(/isis/citation/CBB001562098/)
Book
John Troyer;
(2020)
Technologies of the Human Corpse
(/isis/citation/CBB756490213/)
Article
Mila Daskalova;
(2021)
Printing as Poison, Printing as Cure: Work and Health in the Nineteenth-Century Printing Office and Asylum
(/isis/citation/CBB624605442/)
Book
Brian P. Luskey;
(2020)
Men is Cheap: Exposing the frauds of free labor in Civil War America
(/isis/citation/CBB381848420/)
Review
Peter A. Coclanis;
(July 2016)
Review of "Empire of Cotton: A Global History"
(/isis/citation/CBB369516381/)
Article
Gavin Wright;
(2020)
Slavery and Anglo-American capitalism revisited
(/isis/citation/CBB835225218/)
Article
Victoria M. Nagy;
Alana J. Piper;
(2020)
The Health and Medical Needs of Victoria's Older Female Prisoners, 1860–1920
(/isis/citation/CBB919561721/)
Book
Henchman, Anna;
(2014)
The Starry Sky Within: Astronomy and the Reach of the Mind in Victorian Literature
(/isis/citation/CBB001550349/)
Be the first to comment!