The Literature of Sensibility and the Cultural Politics of Emotion, 1740-1800

MA - Honours Blended Seminar

Often called "the Age of Sensibility," the later eighteenth century was a time when polite society in Britain became preoccupied with feeling as a basis for human knowledge, as a force for social cohesion, as a moral good.  But by the end of the century, the ideals of sensibility and the sentimental habits of rhetoric and gesture were often seen as more affected than affecting.  Why this abrupt change in public taste?  Did the aesthetic features and political implications of the sentimental worldview doom it from the start to critique and parody?  If so, why is sentimentality still a dominant mode in Anglo-American culture?  Finally, how did a cultural ethos that was arguably at once democratic yet elitist, emancipatory yet paternalistic, work to erase or reinforce markers of social difference such as rank/class, gender, and race?  We'll address these and other questions as we read key examples of the literature that in large part articulated the ideals of sensibility and shaped public taste.  We'll consider the generic conventions, formal elements, and thematic concerns of the verse, fiction, and drama of the period, to build an account of literary sentimentalism.  We'll also investigate the models of affective agency promoted by social reformers, politicians, moral philosophers, and essayists, always with a critical eye to how the cultural politics of emotion have real world material impacts, significant then as now.