The Literature of Sentiment and
Sensibility
I) Definitions
a) in literary history, between neo-classical Reason and
romantic Imagination: the cultivation of Feeing – for its own sake, or with a
moral purpose a transitional period?
cf. Northrop Frye: 'Towards Defining an Age of
Sensibility' – NOT pre-romanticism! – attempt to understand the age of
sensibility on its terms Aristotelian and Longinian approach to
literature:
1)
Emphasis on the product – qualities of consciousness take the lead (meter,
clarity, epigram, wit…) – concentration of sense – characteristic of Augustan
writing, but also Romanticism, according to Frye
2) 'Where the emphasis is on the original process, the
qualities of the subconscious association take the lead, and poetry becomes
hypnotically repetitive, oracular, incantatory, dreamlike and in the original
sense of the word charming.' (Frye) – diffusion of sense – characteristic of
the age of sensibility
b) in Philosophy concept of
sympathy as the basis of sociability –elaborated by philosophers of the
Scottish Enlightenment:
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)
sources of the idea of sensibility: - benevolent of
Shaftesbury, certain dissenting traditions (devotional poetry, language of the
heart, later in the works of Wesley, e.g.)
- philosophy of Locke (focus on sensory perception)
- In the late 17th century, science (certain models of
the nervous system – sensibility as an organization (e.g., a highly
refined nervous organization)—the feeling is not localized; the whole body is
the conduit of feeling!)
c) in culture at large
cf. Susan Manning's definition of sensibility as a system
of relations and ruptures, part of a fluctuating but continuous repertoire in
emotional representation' – permeates a range of discourses, from abolitionism to
discussions of sexuality
Definitions of terms:
According to Van Sant, sensibility and sentiment are, in
one respect, easy to separate: sensibility is associated
with the body, and sentiment is associated with the mind. The first is based on
physical sensitivity and the processes of sensation; the second refers to a
refinement of thought' (1993: 4).
BUT:
Other scholars contend that the terms are so closely allied that 18th
-c writers often use them interchangeably!
II) Characteristics and preoccupations
1) Mood of melancholy (feeling 'without object'! – cf.
also introjections of the sublime) e.g.. William Cowper (1731-1800): 'The
Castaway' (1799)
2) Set-piece scenes of virtue in distress – sympathetic
gazing upon a sufferer (a woman, a child, an enslaved person, a bird, or other
small animal) cf. Sterne: A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy (1768)
but also increasingly: the poet, the writer as man/woman of feeling! – the idea of the
suffering artist.
A new concept of masculinity: feminine virtue is bestowed
upon men (feminization of men?) – men represented as susceptible to all kinds
of emotions and emotional excess – re-definition of gentility as a
non-aristocratic virtue!! (cf. rise of middle classes)
3) bodily expression of feeling (cf. nervous theory) --
somatized reactions (tears, swoons, deathly pallor)
cf. Henry Mackenzie's The Man of Feeling (1771)
4) trope of personification in poetry
cf. Collins's 'The Passions: An Ode for Music,' 'Ode to
Fear.'
5) Stylistic excess creating a performance of intimacy
(ellipses, fragmentation, exclamations, etc.) – making sure that the feeling
can be experienced as sincere (cf. negative connotations of 'sentimental')
e.g., Richardson's Pamela or Virtue Rewarded (1740);
Clarissa, or the History of a Young Lady (1747- 48); Sir Charles Grandison
(1753-54)
focus on private subjectivity; epistolary form depicts
the innermost 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');
6) Expression over correctness and rules – revolution in
poetic language! e.g. Chatterton's Rowley poems
III) Some issues in connection with the literature of
sensibility
1) Objectifying the sufferer – 'theatrics of virtue' (latent
sadism?)
hierarchical setting: pity for children, women, animals,
the uneducated, etc. bestows on the gazer a special value
BUT: an increasing number of women poets, 'rustic' poets, and
even slaves write literature! cf. the case of Robert Burns: a Scottish
peasant poet (called a 'heaven-taught plowman' by Mackenzie) who invites
sympathy, but also wants to dictate the terms in which he can be sympathised
with
2) Exercise of compassion, instead of social action? --
but often promoting social reform
3) Questions of sincerity and manipulation cf. Burns: 'O Leave Novels' Recommended reading Harold Bloom (ed.), Poets of Sensibility
and the Sublime (New York, New Haven, Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers,
1986) – esp. N. Frye, 'Towards Defining an Age of Sensibility' Ildikó Csengei, Sympathy, Sensibility and
the Literature of Feeling in the Eighteenth Century (Houndmills: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2011)
Christine
Gerrard, ed., A Companion to Eighteenth-Century Poetry (Blackwell, 2006) – esp.
chapter 9 (Jennifer Keith, 'Poetry, Sentiment, and Sensibility')
Thomas Keymer and Jon Mee, eds., The Cambridge Companion
to English Literature 1740-1830 (CUP, 2004) – especially chapter 5 (Susan
Manning, 'Sensibility')
Nigel Leask, Robert Burns & Pastoral:
Poetry and Improvement in Late Eighteenth-Century Scotland (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2010)
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