English fiction -- 18th century -- History and criticism. and Sentimentalism in literature.
Abstract
This dissertation investigates the properties of sentimentality by analyzing the move in British literature from a fascination with heightened affect to a celebration of Gothic excess during the period 1768--1796. This study develops an account of sentimentality as a model of agency, theorizes the relationship of sentimental ideology to sentimental narrative form, and traces continuities between the sentimental and Gothic modes through an examination of texts that share a preoccupation with the aesthetics and ethics of sentimentalism. By examining representations of sentimental agency in prose fiction narratives by Laurence Sterne, Henry Mackenzie, Ann Radcliffe, and Matthew Lewis, this dissertation argues that sentimentalism was a contradictory cultural discourse rooted in an unstable complex of assumptions about the ontological status and political implications of social identity. Sentimental narrative dramatizes the parodic potential of a code of behavior predicated on the display of a character's virtue in sympathetic response to suffering. Intrinsic to this display is a dynamic tension between the altruistic ideals of the sentimental ethos and the aestheticized, exploitative and self-consciously theatrical mode that often marks its practice. Torn between disinterest and self-interest, between public duty and private desire, the sentimentalist is a conflicted figure whose aggressive aesthetic is increasingly shown to be at once comically bathetic and darkly menacing.
Empfindsamkeit, Roman, Sentimentalism in literature, American fiction -- 19th century -- History and criticism, Communities in literature, Stowe, Harriet Beecher -- 1811-1896 -- Uncle Tom's cabin, Hawthorne, Nathaniel -- 1804-1864 -- House of the seven gables, Melville, Herman -- 1819-1891 -- Pierre, House of the seven gables (Hawthorne, Nathaniel), Pierre (Melville, Herman), Uncle Tom's cabin (Stowe, Harriet Beecher), American fiction, 1800-1899, and Criticism, interpretation, etc
Abstract
'The Logic of Sentiment is a study of sentimentality, a literary mode that aims to answer the question, 'What hold us together?' Against the grain of cultural studies, which understands sentimentality as consolidating communities on the basis of material or historical foundations, Kenneth Dauber takes a philosophical approach. He argues that sentimentality is love conceptualized in denial of a skepticism--understood as the problem of people's otherness to each other--that material associations cannot dispel. Through close readings in the style of 'ordinary language' criticism, Dauber analyzes mid-19th-century American novels, where sentimentality achieved its most complete articulation, with a focus on three novels published nearly simultaneously-Uncle Tom's Cabin, The House of the Seven Gables, and Pierre. Referencing a wide range of philosophical and literary texts, Dauber examines the response of sentimental writers to their growing awareness of love's lack of foundation, the waywardness with which individuals dispose themselves as they succeed and fail in achieving a viable 'we.' The Logic of Sentiment traces the movement from sentimentality to realism, the relation between epistemology and ethics, and the kind of investments that writers attempt to solicit from their readers'
SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Feminism & Feminist Theory, Emotions in literature -- History -- 19th century, Eugenics in literature -- History -- 19th century, Literature and science -- History -- 19th century -- United States, Sentimentalism in literature -- History -- 19th century, and Sex role -- History -- 19th century
Abstract
Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 28. Sep 2020) In The Biopolitics of Feeling Kyla Schuller unearths the forgotten, multiethnic sciences of impressibility-the capacity to be transformed by one's environment and experiences-to uncover how biopower developed in the United States. Schuller challenges prevalent interpretations of biopower and literary cultures to reveal how biopower emerged within the discourses and practices of sentimentalism. Through analyses of evolutionary theories, gynecological sciences, abolitionist poetry and other literary texts, feminist tracts, child welfare reforms, and black uplift movements, Schuller excavates a vast apparatus that regulated the capacity of sensory and emotional feeling in an attempt to shape the evolution of the national population. Her historical and theoretical work exposes the overlooked role of sex difference in population management and the optimization of life, illuminating how models of binary sex function as one of the key mechanisms of racializing power. Schuller thereby overturns long-accepted frameworks of the nature of race and sex difference, offers key corrective insights to modern debates surrounding the equation of racism with determinism and the liberatory potential of ideas about the plasticity of the body, and reframes contemporary notions of sentiment, affect, sexuality, evolution, and heredity
French fiction -- Women authors -- History and criticism, French fiction -- History and criticism -- 19th century, Sentimentalism in literature, and Women and literature -- History -- 19th century -- France
Abstract
Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 23. Nov 2018) The nineteenth-century French novel has long been seen as the heroic production of great men, who confronted in their works the social consequences of the French Revolution. And it is true that French realism, especially as developed by Balzac and Stendhal, was one of the most influential novelistic forms ever invented. Margaret Cohen, however, challenges the traditional account of the genesis of realism by returning Balzac and Stendhal to the forgotten novelistic contexts of their time. Reconstructing a key formative period for the novel, she shows how realist codes emerged in a 'hostile take-over' of a prestigious contemporary sentimental practice of the novel, which was almost completely dominated by women writers. Cohen draws on impressive archival research, resurrecting scores of forgotten nineteenth-century novels, to demonstrate that the codes most closely identified with realism were actually the invention of sentimentality, a powerful aesthetic of emerging liberal-democratic society, although Balzac and Stendhal trivialized sentimental works by associating them with 'frivolous' women writers and readers. Attention to these gendered struggles over genre explains why women were not pioneers of realism in France during the nineteenth century, a situation that contrasts with England, where women writers played a formative role in inventing the modern realist novel. Cohen argues that to understand how literary codes respond to material factors, it is imperative to see how such factors take shape within the literary field as well as within society as a whole. The book also proposes that attention to literature as a social institution will help critics resolve the current, vital question of how to practice literary history in the wake of poststructuralism
Frau, Geschichte, Prostitutes in literature, Sentimentalism in literature, Virtue in literature, English literature -- History and criticism -- 18th century, Prostitutes -- Rehabilitation -- History -- 18th century -- Great Britain, and Women -- Institutional care -- History -- 18th century -- Great Britain
American poetry -- Women authors -- History and criticism, American poetry -- History and criticism -- 19th century, Persuasion (Rhetoric), Sentimentalism in literature, and Social problems in literature
Geschichte, English fiction -- Women authors -- History and criticism, English fiction -- History and criticism -- 18th century, Women and literature -- History -- 18th century -- England, Sentimentalism in literature, and Electronic books
Englische Literatur Amerikas, Religion and literature -- United States -- History -- 19th century, Sentimentalism in literature, Christianity in literature, American literature -- Women authors -- History and criticism, American literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism, LITERARY CRITICISM -- American -- General, American literature, American literature -- Women authors, Religion and literature, and Geschichte
Abstract
The Altar at Home explores the many religious contexts and contents of the sentimental literature of the American nineteenth century, arguing that this genre played a dynamic role in the development of revivalism, millennialism, feminism, and other forms of heterodoxy
Geschichte, Religion and literature -- History -- 19th century -- United States, Sentimentalism in literature, Christianity in literature, American literature -- Women authors -- History and criticism, and American literature -- History and criticism -- 19th century
LITERARY CRITICISM -- European -- English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, English literature, Sentimentalism in literature, English literature -- History and criticism -- 18th century, and Sentimentalism in literature
Abstract
Description based upon print version of record 'Dickens and the Sentimental Tradition' is a timely study of the 'sentimental' in Dickens's novels, which re-evaluates his presentation of emotion as part of a complex literary tradition that enables him to critique nineteenth-century society Introduction -- Sentimentalism and its discontents in the eighteenth-century novel: Fielding, Richardson and Sterne: 'There was more of pleasantry in the conceit, of seeing how an ass would eat a macaroon than of benevolence in giving him one' -- Sentimentalism and its discontents in eighteenth-century drama: Goldsmith and Sheridan: 'Humanity, sir, is a jewel. I love humanity' -- Dickens and nineteenth-century drama: 'We would indict our very dreams' -- The early novels: 'Everything in our lives, whether of good or evil, affects us most by contrasts' -- The later novels: 'What the waves were always saying' -- Conclusion the afterlife of sentimentalism: 'Who will write the history of tears?'
LITERARY CRITICISM -- General, American literature -- History and criticism -- 20th century, and Sentimentalism in literature
Abstract
Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 25. Sep 2019) Today’s critical establishment assumes that sentimentalism is an eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literary mode that all but disappeared by the twentieth century. In this book, Jennifer Williamson argues that sentimentalism is alive and well in the modern era. By examining working-class literature that adopts the rhetoric of 'feeling right' in order to promote a proletarian or humanist ideology as well as neo-slave narratives that wrestle with the legacy of slavery and cultural definitions of African American families, she explores the ways contemporary authors engage with familiar sentimental clichés and ideals. Williamson covers new ground by examining authors who are not generally read for their sentimental narrative practices, considering the proletarian novels of Grace Lumpkin, Josephine Johnson, and John Steinbeck alongside neo-slave narratives written by Margaret Walker, Octavia Butler, and Toni Morrison. Through careful close readings, Williamson argues that the appropriation of sentimental modes enables both sympathetic thought and systemic action in the proletarian and neo-slave novels under discussion. She contrasts appropriations that facilitate such cultural work with those that do not, including Kathryn Stockett’s novel and film The Help. The book outlines how sentimentalism remains a viable and important means of promoting social justice while simultaneously recognizing and exploring how sentimentality can further white privilege. Sentimentalism is not only alive in the twentieth century. It is a flourishing rhetorical practice among a range of twentieth-century authors who use sentimental tactics in order to appeal to their readers about a range of social justice issues. This book demonstrates that at stake in their appeals is who is inside and outside of the American family and nation
De Jong, Mary G., Sonstige and Bennett, Paula Bernat, Sonstige
Subjects
American literature -- History and criticism -- 19th century, Sentimentalism in literature, and Sentimentalism -- History -- 19th century -- United States
LITERARY CRITICISM -- American -- General, American fiction, Canadian fiction, Child rearing in literature, Children's stories, American, Children's stories, Canadian, Girls in literature, Orphans in literature, Sentimentalism in literature, Canadian fiction -- History and criticism -- 20th century, Canadian fiction -- History and criticism -- 19th century, American fiction -- History and criticism -- 20th century, American fiction -- History and criticism -- 19th century, Sentimentalism in literature, Child rearing in literature, Orphans in literature, Children's stories, Canadian -- History and criticism, Children's stories, American -- History and criticism, and Girls in literature
Abstract
OldControl:muse9781421403779. - Multi-User Made available online by Project Muse Includes bibliographical references (p. [207]-215) and index
LITERARY CRITICISM -- European -- English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Della Cruscans (English writers), Emotions in literature, English poetry, English poetry -- Women authors, Influence (Literary, artistic, etc.), Melancholy in literature, Sentimentalism in literature, English poetry -- Women authors -- History and criticism, English poetry -- History and criticism -- 19th century, English poetry -- History and criticism -- 18th century, Emotions in literature, Melancholy in literature, Sentimentalism in literature, and Della Cruscans (English writers)
Abstract
Includes bibliographical references and index Understanding sensibility as performance : the Della Cruscans -- Performing sincere sensibility : Charlotte Smith -- The evolution of sensibility : Susan Evance -- Fame and the limits of sensibility : Letitia Landon -- Rejecting the script of sensibility : Elizabeth Barrett Browning -- Conclusion : reading female poetic tradition after Barrett Browning
