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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Jacob Jewusiak
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
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.
Author(s): Jewusiak J
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century
Year: 2021
Volume: 32
Online publication date: 14/06/2021
Acceptance date: 01/09/2019
Date deposited: 21/06/2021
ISSN (electronic): 1755-1560
Publisher: Open Library of Humanities
URL: https://doi.org/10.16995/ntn.3466
DOI: 10.16995/ntn.3466
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