Romantic Fungi and Other Useless Things: Arnold, Tieck, Keats

Abstract

The following study centres on the motif of the mushroom in romantic poetry, discussing the questions of meaning, use, and indeterminacy that it raises. By analyzing the work of Matthew Arnold, Ludwig Tieck, and John Keats, the article outlines a particular field of semiosis, initially sought out in the border zone between natural and artificial. Importantly, however, each of the examples also actualize a disturbance in that field, suggestive of a poetic capacity beyond the dictum of functionality and efficacy. The investigation furthermore documents a fixation with detail, attempting to theorize its allure with the aid of Roland Barthes and his concept of the ‘third meaning’. Connecting the affective ‘sting’ of the detail with the question of poetic non-function, the study ultimately proposes that a concern for the reading and writing body might fill the space of meaning vacated by poets such as Tieck and Keats.