The Sentimental Novel in the Eighteenth Century

Cambridge University Press, 3/21/2019
EAN 9781108418928, ISBN10: 1108418929

Hardcover, 258 pages, 23.6 x 23.1 x 2 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English

As a literary genre, the sentimental novel reached the height of its vogue in the 1770s and 1780s and was still popular as the eighteenth century drew to a close. This volume presents a comprehensive exploration of the sentimental novel in the eighteenth century, beginning with its origins in the so-called amatory fiction of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Chapters from leading scholars combine the various aspects and contexts of the genre, from politics, slavery, women writers, and the Gothic to the sentimental novel in America, France and Germany, with historically informed close readings of novels by writers including Samuel Richardson (1689–1761), Laurence Sterne (1713–68) and Jane Austen (1775–1817). This volume demonstrates that the sentimental novel continues to engage readers and critics and that, far from being obsolete or only of antiquary interest, it remains a vibrant and exciting area of study.

Introduction Albert J. Rivero
1. The sentimental novel and politics Gary Kelly
2. Sensible readers
experiments in feeling in early prose fiction by women Ros Ballaster
3. Reading for the sentiment
Richardson's novels Bonnie Latimer
4. The virtuous in distress
David Simple, Amelia, Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph Barbara M. Benedict
5. Sentiment from abroad
French novels after 1748 Gillian Dow
6. Sterne's sentimental empiricism Jonathan Lamb
7. Virtue not rewarded
The Man of Feeling and The Sorrows of Young Werther Maureen Harkin
8. Slavery and the novel of sentiment Brycchan Carey
9. Sentiment and the Gothic
failures of emotion in the novels of Mrs Radcliffe and the Minerva Press Hannah Doherty Hudson
10. The sentimental novel in America
The History of Emily Montague, Charlotte Temple, The Power of Sympathy, The Coquette Joseph F. Bartolomeo
11. Novel anachronisms
Sophia Lee's The Life of a Lover and Frances Burney's The Wanderer Melissa Sodeman
12. Jane Austen and the sentimental novel Albert J. Rivero
Select bibliography
Index.