Thermodynamic Rhythm

Ewan Jones

OAI: oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/280192 • DOI: 10.17863/CAM.27559

This essay argues that the cultural reception of thermodynamics in the late nineteenth century reformulated the concept of rhythm, in an attempt to manage, mitigate or acknowledge the problem of waste. Having demonstrated an overlooked historical dialectic between the thermal sciences and prosody, I conclude by reading A. C. Swinburne’s Tristram of Lyonesse, so as to demonstrate how rhythmical excess represents a positive expressive resource.