ABSTRACT
The romantic period has often been seen as an era devoted to youth. This chapter argues that one also finds a Romantic interest in old age. In a close reading of William Wordsworth’s poem “Old Man Travelling” (Lyrical Ballads, 1798), this chapter shows that old age is an ideal of “the young.” It argues that the poem demonstrates Wordsworth’s historical and anthropological fascination with old age, and that, employing an approach that is both “sentimental” and devoted to an aesthetics of nature, he seeks to capture the dignity and moral force of old age. The chapter ends with an assessment of the Stoic values that Wordsworth found represented in the elderly.
