LECTURE 6: THE LITERATURE OF SENTIMENT AND SENSIBILITY
sentiment and sensibility: the cultivation of feelings where i) expression of sentiment is the
central aim, not subordinated to other elements of the work, and ii) the expression of emotion for
its own sake is morally motivated
- ethos of individualism »» anxiety about the sociability of individuals
- because feelings display our common humanity, their cultivation makes us more aware of our
social obligations »» moral relations envisioned as depending on the passions
- sympathy: capacity of grasping the resemblance between ourselves and others »» of feeling
what others feel »» of being understanding and compassionate towards others »» frees us from
self-interest, makes us benevolent and sociable. David Hume (1711-1776), A Treatise of Human
Nature (1739-40); Essays Moral and Political (1741-42); Adam Smith (1723-1790), The Theory
of Moral Sentiments (1759)
»» sentimental: emotionally touching and morally elevated; sensibility: refined and delicate
(physical and emotional) sensitivity which enables our responding to the sentimental.
the poetry of sensibility
Lecture 5: melancholy musings as mid-century poetry’s turn away from socio-historical world
BUT: sensibility aims at counteracting poetic isolation »» poetry of sensibility a form of the
tension of poetic withdrawal and social obligations (see also Gray or Goldsmith): the display of
private feelings is offered as a way of reaching out towards others »» the pleasures of melancholy
are moral pleasures, emotions both personal and social
The tears, which pity taught to flow,
My eyes shall then disown;
The heart, that throbb’d at others’ woe,
Shall then scarce feel its own.
(Frances Greville [née Macartney]:
“A Prayer for Indifference” [1759])
’Tis woven in the world’s great plan,
And fix’d by heaven’s decree,
That all the true delights of man
Should spring from Sympathy.
(…)
Thus grief itself has comforts dear,
The sordid never know;
And ecstasy attends the tear,
When virtue bids it flow.”
(William Cowper, “Addressed to Miss Macartney on
Reading the Prayer for Indifference” [1762])
William Cowper (1731-1800): Olney Hymns (1779); The Task (1785); The Castaway (1799)
- the poet a “stricken deer that left the herd long since” and who “withdrew to seek a tranquil
death in distant shades.” BUT: poem ends in quite satisfaction: his poetry serves God, and the
benevolence his sensibility makes him feel for others serves his fellow human beings and his
country »» melancholy leads to pleasure of virtue and sociability
Charlotte Smith (1749-1806): Elegiac Sonnets (1784, and several later, expanded editions); The
Emigrants (1791); Beachy Head and Other Poems (1807); also 12 novels, e.g.: Emmeline, or The
Orphan of the Castle (1788)
- personal feeling is upheld in Smith’s poems with reference to Humanity at large
- instructs Britain in arguing that the acts of sympathetic humanity in dealing with emigrants is a
greater achievement than winning battles »» claims the authority to posit a national system of
values on the grounds of sensibility
»» the ethos of feeling operates by directing individual emotional capacity toward larger social
concerns BUT: poetry’s social role is to project the community of feeling people as a hopeful
fantasy.
drama and sentimentalism
1. a) end of the 17th century: resistance to Restoration drama’s concern with sex, gender conflicts,
and money, and to its respect for the sophisticated and the libidinous; b) change in audience, tie
between stage and court severed; c) campaign for a more virtuous theatre takes “sentimental”
forms: plays built on pathos seek to evoke sympathy, tearful responses that ignite benevolence
2. Tragedies focusing on victimized woman characters (“she-tragedies”); Thomas Otway (16521685), e.g. The Orphan (1680); Nicholas Rowe (1647-1718), e.g. The Fair Penitent (1703);
explicit didactic purpose behind the aim of provoking pathetic response, aggrandizing merchant
classes: George Lillo (1693-1739), The London Merchant (1731)
3. Comedies: make space for tears and woes, move towards tragicomedy; laughter separated from
the moral message, enacted by suffering women and passive, benevolent heroes. Sir Richard
Steele (1672-1729), The Conscious Lovers (1722) (“joy too exquisite for laughter”)
4. Drama in political context: “historical parallel” plays (early e.g.: Joseph Addison’s Cato,
1712), anti-Walpolean popular operas, farces and comedies (Gay’s Beggar’s Opera, Fielding’s
Historical Register for the Year 1736) »» Stage Licensing Act of 1737
5. Goldsmith, An Essay on the Theatre (1773): “laughing” and “weeping” comedies; She Stoops
to Conquer (1773); Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816), The Rivals (1775), School for
Scandal (1777) BUT: even counter-sentimentalist plays contain sentimental features
sentimental novels
1. Samuel Richardson (1689-1761): Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740); Clarissa, or the
History of a Young Lady (1747-48); Sir Charles Grandison (1753-54);
a) focus on private subjectivity motivated by the assumption that the delicate feelings he depicts
are morally admirable; b) epistolary form depicts the inmost feelings of characters in the passing
moments of their formation (“writing to the moment”), and enables recording the impact on
others, whose tearful responses provided the example for the reader’s reaction (“reading for the
sentiment”); c) Pamela and Clarissa the comic and tragic versions of the theme of virtue in
distress; Grandison experiments with the man of feeling
2. Laurence Sterne (1713-1768)
a) The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759-1767): i) playing with the novel’s
formal conventions; ii) if the consciousness of the individual is made up of a sequence of
associations, minds are isolated »» meaningful contact with one another through the conscious
exertion of affections »» iii) heroes self-consciously responsive to emotional stimuli, the novel
abounding in pathetic scenes that serve moral betterment
b) A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy (1768): i) a journey through sentimental
encounters »» episodic, fragmentary; ii) continually associates sentimental encounters with erotic
excitement »» suggests that as sentimental encounters with women may serve to disguise sexual
desires, so sympathy may disguise self-satisfaction »» fellow-feeling may itself be based on
selfish motives iii) most sophisticated sentimental novel because it absorbs the objections of
sceptical readers
3. Henry Mackenzie (1745-1831): The Man of Feeling (1771): fragmentary; the hero pines away
in illness caused by love for a woman to whom he does not dare to confess his feelings
»» a) sentimental writing suggests that affection transcends language – tears, blushes, fainting,
silence b) feeling is an affliction, heroes too good to live »» man of feeling ends in social and
emotional isolation, fades from the world »» supposedly exemplary heroes too special to be
examples, and wholly ineffectual
»» the sentimental project of imagining sociability is self-defeating; marks an anxiety concerning
the sociability of individuals, and it ultimately fails in its attempt to regain through feelings the
public role and authority of literature.