Reimagining persuasion in British Romantic literature / Yasmin Solomonescu

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Solomonescu, Yasmin, author.

Series:

Cambridge studies in Romanticism

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English literature--18th century--History and criticism.

English literature.

English literature--19th century--History and criticism.

Persuasion (Psychology) in literature.

Persuasion (Rhetoric) in literature.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2026

Summary:

"The theory and practice of persuasion, argues Yasmin Solomonescu, were fundamentally reconceived by British Romantic writers at the turn of the nineteenth century. Examining major and lesser-known works by Thomas De Quincey, William Hazlitt, Jane Austen, William Godwin, William Wordsworth, and Percy Shelley, the author deftly explores the emergence of an important new literature and epistemology of persuasion that allowed for doubt, dissent, and changes of mind. This recalibrated notion of persuasion – a uniquely flexible one – was bound up with eighteenth-century developments encompassing both a crisis of belief and the polarization of political discourse during an age of revolution. Dialoguing with cognate fields such as rhetorical studies, philosophy, and the history of belief, the book makes a compelling case for the Romantic reimagining of persuasion as an unacknowledged impetus for the period's literature, a bridge between literature and rhetorical theory, and a resource for literary criticism and civic life today"-- Cambridge Core

Contents:

Introduction : From perswasion to persuasion, belief without absolutes

Eddying about thoughts : Paradigms of persuasion in De Quincey and Hazlitt

Plausible tales : Persuasion and legal conviction in Godwin and Wordsworth

Marriages of mind : Intimate persuasions in Austen

Revolutions in opinion : The poetics of persuasion in Shelley

Coda : Persuasion among others

Online resource; title from PDF title page (Cambridge Core, viewed June 8, 2026)

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index

Other Format:

Print version: Solomonescu, Yasmin Reimagining persuasion in British Romantic literature

ISBN:

9781009785372

1009785370

9781009785334

1009785338

OCLC:

1573775994

Publisher Number:

CIPO000389687

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license