In Sensibility, originally published in 1986, Janet Todd charts the growth and decline of sentimental writing as a privileged mode in the eighteenth century. She shows how sentimental writing is riven with contradictions: while it applauds fellowship, it also expresses a yearning for isolation, and while it stresses the ties of friendship and family, it does so at the expense of sexual feeling, which grows menacing and destructive.
By the 1770s, as the idea of sensibility was losing ground, ‘sentimentality’ came in as a pejorative term. Janet Todd ends her study of sensibility by detailing the various attacks on the cult, from radicals and conservatives, feminists and Christian moralists; from Coleridge who saw it as unmanning the nation to Jane Austen who considered it an elaborate sham
In Sensibility, originally published in 1986, Janet Todd charts the growth and decline of sentimental writing as a privileged mode in the eighteenth century. She shows how sentimental writing is riven with contradictions: while it applauds fellowship, it also expresses a yearning for isolation, and while it stresses the ties of friendship and family, it does so at the expense of sexual feeling, which grows menacing and destructive.
By the 1770s, as the idea of sensibility was losing ground, ‘sentimentality’ came in as a pejorative term. Janet Todd ends her study of sensibility by detailing the various attacks on the cult, from radicals and conservatives, feminists and Christian moralists; from Coleridge who saw it as unmanning the nation to Jane Austen who considered it an elaborate sham
![Sensibility: An Introduction](http://vs-images.bn-web.com/static/redesign/srcs/images/grey-box.png?v11.11.4)
Sensibility: An Introduction
178![Sensibility: An Introduction](http://vs-images.bn-web.com/static/redesign/srcs/images/grey-box.png?v11.11.4)
Sensibility: An Introduction
178Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9781032745138 |
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Publisher: | Taylor & Francis |
Publication date: | 05/01/2024 |
Series: | Routledge Revivals |
Pages: | 178 |
Product dimensions: | 5.44(w) x 8.50(h) x (d) |