Sentimentalism, ethics, and the culture of feeling / Michael Bell.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bell, Michael, 1941-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Sentimentalism in literature.

Literature, Modern--History and criticism.

Literature, Modern.

Physical Description:

ix, 230 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire ; New York : Palgrave, 2000.

Summary:

"Sentimentalism, Ethics and the Culture of Feeling" defends feeling against customary distrust or condescension by showing that the 18th-century cult of sentiment, despite its sometimes surreal manifestations, has led to a positive culture of feeling. The very reaction against sentimentalism has taught us to identify sentimentality. Fiction, moreover, remains a principal means not just of discriminating quality of feeling but of appreciating its essentially imaginative nature.

Contents:

Introduction: the Transformations of Sentiment 1

1 'Affective Individualism' and the Cult of Sentiment 11

2 Feeling and/as Fiction: Illusion, Absorption and Emotional Quixotry 57

3 Friedrich Schiller and the Aestheticizing of Sentiment 74

4 Wordsworth: the Man of Feeling, Recollected Emotion and the 'Sentiment of Being' 92

5 Victorian Sentimentality: the Dialectic of Sentiment and Truth of Feeling 118

6 Feeling as Illusion: Rousseau to Proust 150

7 Modernism and the Attack on Sentiment 160

8 Henry James and D. H. Lawrence: 'Felt Life' and Truth to Feeling 170

Conclusion: Literature, Criticism and the Culture of Feeling 205.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 219-226) and index.

ISBN:

0333721101

0312128428

OCLC:

44128062