Thomas Love Peacock, in his essay 'The Four Ages of Poetry', opposes 'the progress of knowledge', as accelerated by historians and philosophers, to 'the rubbish of departed ignorance', as wallowed in by poets. This opposition seems categorical, and invites resistance from poets and those supporting the cognitive claims of poetry; P. B. Shelley duly obliged. However, what happens if one does indeed wallow in the specific kind of 'rubbish' designated, ironically, by Peacock? This essay aims to find out, with reference to Wordsworth's poem 'The Danish Boy' (rubbished by Peacock) and to Theodor Adorno, German connoisseur of rubbish. In Wordsworth, Peacock and Adorno, we can sense the shadow of knowledge in the form of its determinate negation. Poetry is haunted by the particular knowledge it lacks, and this study argues thus for a kind of negative poetic knowledge. By returning to the rubbish of departed and not yet departed ignorance, this essay hopes to trope a heap of commodities into something else.
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