The Romantic Rhetoric of Accumulation

"For Lenora Hanson, careful attunement to rhetorical and poetic figuration in the age of Romanticism must not only acknowledge its deployment in forms of dispossession enacted by and against capital; it must also chart the movement of the figure in the proliferation of subsistence in the war against subsistence, in the riot of differences in the accumulation of differences, and in the globality of Romanticism that survives the globalization of Romanticism. To understand these stringent requirements—and then to practice them, with such aplomb, brilliance, and dedication—is a stirring achievement. The Romantic Rhetoric of Accumulation is a work of massive and singular importance."—Fred Moten, New York University

"This is a profound work that engages as deeply with Romantic poetry as it does with traditions of literary criticism, gender studies, and critical race studies. The seriousness and lyricism of its argumentation will make this an enduring contribution."—Jordy Rosenberg, University of Massachusetts-Amherst

"This book establishes Hanson as a significant theorist of subsistence and will be a landmark of Romanticism. Original, learned, and always engaging."—Rei Terada, University of California, Irvine

"Reading historically and rhetorically is itself a complex way. It is to Hanson's credit that this book is intricate—wide-ranging and lateral in its connections, deeply learned and ethical in its orientation—without being difficult to learn things from. Hanson argues as well as teaches, tells as well as shows through examples, illustrations, and, in one case, a bespoke visualization of the spatial logic of Joseph Priestley's An Account of a Society for Encouraging the Industriousness of the Poor (1787). Thus Hanson invites readers interested both in and beyond Romanticism to meet the problem of Marx's 'so-called primitive accumulation' in the gendered and racialized forms of subsistence that dispossession produces and figuration records."—Carmen Faye Mathes, Critical Inquiry