I her poem “Epistle to William Wilberforce, Esq. on the Rejection of the Bill for Abolishing the slave trade,” I noticed that Anna Barbauld uses the clever strategy of invoking her poetic contemporaries’ idealized depictions of nature in order to bolster her argument. Romantic poets were captivated by nature, and authors such as Wordsworth and Coleridge created countless works in the language of the rural commoner celebrating the joys of simple pastoral life. Barbauld contends that such idealized portraits of the countryside can’t exist in conjunction with slavery, and the tortured cries of the slaves defile preceding pleasant images of the pasture. Such violence must have been easily ignored by English citizens as slaves were sold abroad, so Barbauld forces the matter to her audiences attention with a barrage of starkly contrasting sensory imagery.
As I noted in my post regarding the efficacy and persuasive power of the visual, I agree that Barbauld's usage of sensory images was a wise technique. In fact, it was arguably even more potent of a strategy than, say, Turner's. Barbauld's method leaves much to the imagination. Therefore, readers could formulate in their minds possibly more horrific and appalling scenes and portraits than a painter could ever reflect on canvas.
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