Association, Affect, and Material Reading Practices of Anna Laetitia Barbauld

At the end of the eighteenth century, reading practice was shifting from an embodied, affective exercise to a detached cognitive one. This essay examines how debates about truth and knowledge diverged along disciplinary and gender lines during this critical transition. The essay traces the influence of association psychology—particularly the theories of David Hartley and Joseph Priestley—on Romantic-era poets including Anna Laetitia Barbauld and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Through Feminist Formalist Analysis attuned to affect and cognition, this essay demonstrates how Barbauld's poetic montages challenge the period's scientific discourse. Her "Inventory of the Furniture in Dr. Priestley's Study" and two "Hill of Science" works insist upon physiological and cognitive alignment between readers and textual bodies. Where Priestley and Coleridge detach themselves from direct experience, Barbauld locates truth in the cooperative, embodied encounter at the site of the poem—a material consciousness that collapses symbolic scientific discourse into affective translation.