Poetical Matter examines the two-way exchange of language and
methods between nineteenth-century poetry and the physical
sciences. The book argues that poets such as William Wordsworth,
Mathilde Blind, and Thomas Hardy identified poetry as an
experimental investigation of nature's materiality. It also
explores how science writers such as Humphry Davy, Mary Somerville,
and John Tyndall used poetry to formulate their theories, to bestow
cultural legitimacy on the emerging disciplines of chemistry and
physics, and to communicate technical knowledge to non-specialist
audiences. The book's chapters show how poets and science writers
relied on a set of shared terms ("form," "experiment," "rhythm,"
"sound," "measure") and how the meaning of those terms was debated
and reimagined in a range of different texts. "A stimulating
analysis of nineteenth-century poetry and physics. In this
groundbreaking study, Tate turns to sound to tease out fascinating
continuities across scientific inquiry and verse. Reflecting that
'the processes of the universe' were themselves 'rhythmic,' he
shows that a wide range of poets and scientists were thinking
through undulatory motion as a space where the material and the
immaterial met. 'The motion of waves,' Tate demonstrates, was 'the
exemplary form in the physical sciences.' Sound waves, light,
energy, and poetic meter were each characterized by a 'process of
undulation,' that could be understood as both a physical and a
formal property. Drawing on work in new materialism and new
formalism, Tate illuminates a nineteenth-century preoccupation with
dynamic patterning that characterizes the undulatory as (in John
Herschel's words) not 'things, but forms.'" -Anna Henchman,
Associate Professor of English at Boston University, USA "This
impressive study consolidates and considerably advances the field
of physics and poetry studies. Moving easily and authoritatively
between canonical and scientist poets, Nineteenth-Century Poetry
and the Physical Sciences draws scientific thought and poetic form
into telling relation, disclosing how they were understood
variously across the nineteenth century as both comparable and
competing ways of knowing the physical world. Clearly written and
beautifully structured, Nineteenth-Century Poetry and the Physical
Sciences is both scholarly and accessible, a fascinating and
indispensable contribution to its field." -Daniel Brown, Professor
of English at the University of Southampton, UK "Essential reading
for Victorianists. Tate's study of nineteenth-century poetry and
science reconfi gures debate by insisting on the equivalence of
accounts of empirical fact and speculative theory rather than their
antagonism. The undulatory rhythms of the universe and of poetry,
the language of science and of verse, come into new relations. Tate
brilliantly re-reads Coleridge, Tennyson, Mathilde Blind and Hardy
through their explorations of matter and ontological reality. He
also addresses contemporary theory from Latour to Jane Bennett." -
Isobel Armstrong, Emeritus Professor of English at Birkbeck,
University of London, UK
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