As Tennyson's little Hamlet , Maud (1855) posits a speaker who, like Hamlet, confronts the ignominious fate of dead remains. Maud's speaker contemplates such remains as bone, hair, shell, and he experiences his world as one composed of hard inorganic matter, such things as rocks, gems, flint, stone, coal, and gold. While Maud's imagery of stones, and hard substances has been read as signifying the speaker's desire unnaturally to harden himself into insensibility (Killham 231, 235), I argue that these substances benefit from being read in the context of Tennyson's wider understanding of geological processes. Along with highlighting these materials, the text's imagery focuses on processes of fossilisation, while Maud's characters appear to be in the grip of an insidious petrification. Despite the preoccupation with geological materials and processes, the poem has received little critical attention in these terms. Dennis R. Dean, for example, whose Tennyson and Geology (1985) is still the most rigorous study of the sources of Tennyson's knowledge of geology, does not detect a geological register in the poem, arguing that by the time Tennyson began to write Maud, he was relatively at ease with the geological world (Dean 21). I argue, however, that Maud reveals that Tennyson was anything but at ease with geology. While In Memoriam (1851) wrestles with religious doubt that is both initiated, and, to some extent, alleviated by geological theories, it finally affirms the transcendence of spirit over matter. Maud, conversely, gravitates towards the ground, concerning itself with the corporal remains of life and with the agents of change that operate on all matter. Influenced by his reading of geology, and particularly Charles Lyell's provocative writings on the embedding and fossilisation of organic material in strata in his Principles of Geology (1830--33) volume 2, Tennyson's poem probes the taphonomic processes that result in the incorporation of dead remains and even living flesh into the geological system.
...More
Thesis
Zimmerman, Virginia Lee-Alice;
(2001)
The Grating Roar of Science: Victorian Revisions of Time
(/isis/citation/CBB001562372/)
Article
Buckland, Adelene;
(2010)
Losing the Plot: The Geological Anti-Narrative
(/isis/citation/CBB001022441/)
Book
Diego Salvadori;
(2023)
Il tempo del diaspro. La litosfera di Luigi Meneghello
(/isis/citation/CBB945602520/)
Book
Andrea Tenca;
(2020)
Dinosauri, demoni, operai. Una storia culturale del sottosuolo tra scienza e letteratura
(/isis/citation/CBB116328239/)
Article
Hugh Torrens;
Madeleine Gill;
(2018)
John Player's 'geological observations' of 1764-1766, and his contributions to the society of arts Journal Museum Rusticum et Commerciale
(/isis/citation/CBB189155137/)
Article
Pierre Savaton;
(2022)
L’histoire de la géologie dans la Revue d’histoire des sciences de 1947 à 2022
(/isis/citation/CBB743911281/)
Thesis
Wu, Shellen Xiao;
(2010)
Underground Empires: German Imperialism and the Introduction of Geology in China, 1860--1919
(/isis/citation/CBB001567215/)
Thesis
Daniel Francis Zizzamia;
(2015)
Making the West Malleable: Coal, Geohistory, and Western Expansion, 1800–1920
(/isis/citation/CBB915846070/)
Article
Shelley Trower;
(2014)
‘Primitive Rocks: Humphry Davy, Mining, and the Sublime Landscapes of Cornwall’
(/isis/citation/CBB917092083/)
Book
Brook, Anthony;
(2002)
Gideon Mantell. Memento Mori---2
(/isis/citation/CBB000501842/)
Thesis
Sponsel, Alistair William;
(2009)
Coral Reef Formation and the Sciences of Earth, Life, and Sea, c. 1770--1952
(/isis/citation/CBB001561159/)
Article
Nie, Fu-ing;
Guo, Shi-rong;
(2012)
The Evolvement of Lyell's Principles of Geology and the Dixue Qianshi
(/isis/citation/CBB001250694/)
Article
Gegotek, J.;
(2008)
The Basic Theoretical Assumptions of Charles Lyell's “Principles of Geology” (1830--1833)
(/isis/citation/CBB000931674/)
Book
Rudwick, Martin J. S.;
(2005)
Lyell and Darwin, Geologists: Studies in the Earth Sciences in the Age of Reform
(/isis/citation/CBB000501484/)
Article
Aragonès, Enric;
(2008)
Lyell's Journey in Catalonia
(/isis/citation/CBB000950011/)
Book
Lucier, Paul;
(2008)
Scientists and Swindlers: Consulting on Coal and Oil in America, 1820--1890
(/isis/citation/CBB000951111/)
Article
Wilson, Leonard G.;
(2009)
Archibald Geikie on the Last Elevation of Scotland
(/isis/citation/CBB000932606/)
Book
Buckland, Adelene;
(2013)
Novel Science: Fiction and the Invention of Nineteenth-Century Geology
(/isis/citation/CBB001320420/)
Article
Clary, Renee M.;
Wandersee, James H.;
(2015)
The Evolution of Non-Quantitative Geological Graphics in Texts during the Formative Years of Geology (1788--1840)
(/isis/citation/CBB001422276/)
Book
Ciancio, Luca;
(2009)
Le colonne del tempo: Il “tempio di Serapide” a Pozzuoli nella storia della geologia, dell'archeologia e dell'arte (1750--1900)
(/isis/citation/CBB001021269/)
Be the first to comment!