Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"[A] formal and theoretical engagement with the poetics of silence is precisely the purpose of Jonathan Bugg's book. Following the work of critics like Susan Wolfson, Bugg works to beat back a New Historicist criticism that has tended to view form, and, indeed, poetry itself, as a kind of escape - a wriggling out of one's historical moment through the apparently false consciousness and consolations of nature and lyric." -- Elias Greig *
British Association for Romantic Studies Review *
"This book masterfully combines astute readings of canonical writers with archival recovery of the work of little-known victims of the Gagging Acts. The end result is a nuanced, original, and exciting analysis of great importance." -- Judith Thompson * Dalhousie University *
"Bugg is at once precise and subtle as a reader of primary text and context and panoramic in his critical perspective....nothing less than a reorientation of the field at its origin." -- Lauren Neefe *
Romantic Circles *
"This fascinating and revealing book will be discussed by scholars in Romantic studies for years to come." -- Mark Canuel *
Studies in Romanticism *
"This wonderful book provides new perspectives on the rhetoric of silences, ellipses, and displacement that characterizes so much of the writing of the 1790s. Bugg's study shows how context—in his case the legal context of prosecution and surveillance—can be used to open up the complexities of texts, even when governments try to shut them down." -- Jon Mee * University of Warwick *
"John Bugg's marvellous new study [is] at once a pioneering thrust and a landmark achievement." -- Kenneth R. Johnston *
Romanticism *
