Sentiment and Sociability: The Language of Feeling in the Eighteenth Century - Hardcover

Mullan, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0198128657 ISBN 13: 9780198128656

Publisher: Clarendon Press, 1988

Synopsis

This is a study of the rise of the novel in the mid-eighteenth century, which was also the rise of sentimentalism - a fashion for the celebration of extreme sensibilities. While the fondness for sentiment embarrassed later literary criticism, it originally legitimated a morally suspect phenomenon: the novel. This book describes that legitimation and looks beyond novels in an attempt to understand sentimentalism as the expression of a culture's anxiety about the nature of social relations. A language of feeling is shown to be the resource of philosophers like David Hume and Adam Smith, as much as novelists like Richardson and Sterne. In fiction and philosophy it speaks of a perceived lack of contact between private and public expressions of sociability. To understand how this perception leads novelists to associate virtuous feeling with disabling suffering, the work also looks at 18th century discussions of nervous disorder where, as in many novels, sensibility becomes illness. In the connection between fiction and other examinations of the private self, sentimentalism is seen as the symptom of a civilization's deepest discontents. The work is designed to be of value to scholars, graduates, undergrates studying eighteenth century English literature - particularly the novel, some social historians and historians of philosophy.

About this title

Review

'Mullan's prose is stylish ... and his argument compelling ... this is a remarkable study of sentimentalism.'Times Literary Supplement

'Mullan has provided a stimulating study which is not afraid to explore complex themes and be provocative in its judgements' Times Higher Education Supplement

'admirable study' Notes and Queries

'responsible, informed and thoughtful book' Yvonne Noble, British Journal of 18th Century Studies, 13:2

`Mullan's study is a valuable, sustained, and richly suggestive meditation on the essential ambiguity of the language of feeling. He deserves much credit for his refusal to talk reductively about a subject so complex ... I can highly recommend this book.'Eighteenth-Century Fiction

'absorbing study' English Studes

Mullan's book is an original and important contribution to the history of ideas. It offers brilliant and convincing reinterpretations kof Clarissa adn Tristam Shandy. (The Eighteenth Century)

About the Author

John Mullan is at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge.

Edition details

• Publisher: Clarendon Press
• Publication date: 1988
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0198128657
• ISBN 13: 9780198128656
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 272