The Discourse of Sensibility

The Discourse of Sensibility PDF Author: Henry Martyn Lloyd
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3319027026
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
This volume reconstructs the body of sensibility and the discourse which constructed it. The discourse of sensibility was deployed very widely throughout the mid- to late-eighteenth century, particularly in France and Britain. To inquire into the body of sensibility is then necessarily to enter into an interdisciplinary space and so to invite the plurality of methodological approaches which this collection exemplifies. The chapters collected here draw together the histories of literature and aesthetics, metaphysics and epistemology, moral theory, medicine, and cultural history. Together, they contribute to four major themes: First, the collection reconstructs various modes by which the sympathetic subject was construed or scripted, including through the theatre, poetry, literature, and medical and philosophical treaties. It secondly draws out those techniques of affective pedagogy which were implied by the medicalisation of the knowing body, and thirdly highlights the manner in which the body of sensibility was constructed as simultaneously particular and universal. Finally, it illustrates the ‘centrifugal forces’ at play within the discourse, and the anxiety which often accompanied them. At the centre of eighteenth-century thought was a very particular object: the body of sensibility, the Enlightenment’s knowing body. The persona of the knowledge-seeker was constructed by drawing together mind and matter, thought and feeling. And so where the Enlightenment thinker is generally associated with reason, truth-telling, and social and political reform, the Enlightenment is also known for its valorisation of emotion. During the period, intellectual pursuits were envisioned as having a distinctly embodied and emotional aspect. The body of ‘sensibility’ encompassed these apparently disparate strands and was associated with terms including ‘sentimental’, ‘sentiment’, ‘sense’, ‘sensation’, and ‘sympathy’.

The Discourse of Sensibility

The Discourse of Sensibility PDF Author: Henry Martyn Lloyd
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3319027026
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 222

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume reconstructs the body of sensibility and the discourse which constructed it. The discourse of sensibility was deployed very widely throughout the mid- to late-eighteenth century, particularly in France and Britain. To inquire into the body of sensibility is then necessarily to enter into an interdisciplinary space and so to invite the plurality of methodological approaches which this collection exemplifies. The chapters collected here draw together the histories of literature and aesthetics, metaphysics and epistemology, moral theory, medicine, and cultural history. Together, they contribute to four major themes: First, the collection reconstructs various modes by which the sympathetic subject was construed or scripted, including through the theatre, poetry, literature, and medical and philosophical treaties. It secondly draws out those techniques of affective pedagogy which were implied by the medicalisation of the knowing body, and thirdly highlights the manner in which the body of sensibility was constructed as simultaneously particular and universal. Finally, it illustrates the ‘centrifugal forces’ at play within the discourse, and the anxiety which often accompanied them. At the centre of eighteenth-century thought was a very particular object: the body of sensibility, the Enlightenment’s knowing body. The persona of the knowledge-seeker was constructed by drawing together mind and matter, thought and feeling. And so where the Enlightenment thinker is generally associated with reason, truth-telling, and social and political reform, the Enlightenment is also known for its valorisation of emotion. During the period, intellectual pursuits were envisioned as having a distinctly embodied and emotional aspect. The body of ‘sensibility’ encompassed these apparently disparate strands and was associated with terms including ‘sentimental’, ‘sentiment’, ‘sense’, ‘sensation’, and ‘sympathy’.

Enlightenment and Pathology

Enlightenment and Pathology PDF Author: Anne C. Vila
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801858093
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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Book Description
If moods are as contagious as colds, and wickedness as debilitating as a bad diet, inquiries into assorted discourses in 18th-century France still have much to tell. Author Anne Vila shows that multiple junctures between the body and the mind promoted a steady commerce of speculation and discussion between science and the social salons of the time. 9 illustrations.

The Poetics of Sensibility

The Poetics of Sensibility PDF Author: Jerome J. McGann
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780198184782
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
The Poetics of Sensibility takes as its prime aim the neglected poetry, principally by women, which qualifies as either poetry of sensibility or poetry of sentiment.

Sentience and Sensibility

Sentience and Sensibility PDF Author: Matthew R. Silliman
Publisher: Parmenides Publishing
ISBN: 1930972512
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
Sentience and Sensibility is a dialogue that engages a number of issues in moral theory in a rigorous and original manner, while remaining accessible to students and other nonspecialist readers. It accomplishes this by means of the time-honored (if presently dormant) medium of philosophical dialogue, in which its characters actively challenge each other to clarify their ideas and defend their reasoning. In this manner the conversation develops and weighs some proposed solutions, in largely non-technical language, to a number of current and traditional moral problems (including the nature and origin of moral value, the moral status of nonhuman animals, problems of partiality, and other vexed topics).Moral philosophy and theory can seem as remote and intimidating as everyday ethical matters and moral intuitions are pressing. Sentience and Sensibility proposes that these two should meet. The book's characters gently challenge each other to clarify their thinking and defend their reasoning, and in this rigorous yet personable manner explore traditional and fresh takes on morality. The conversation aims not only to discover thoughtful answers to such questions, but to do so while being respectful of both philosophical theory and ordinary moral intuitions

Poetry and the Commodification of Discourse in the Age of Sensibility

Poetry and the Commodification of Discourse in the Age of Sensibility PDF Author: Kenneth Michael Brothers
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Economics in literature
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description


The Rhetoric of Sensibility in Eighteenth-Century Culture

The Rhetoric of Sensibility in Eighteenth-Century Culture PDF Author: Paul Goring
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139456768
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
The Rhetoric of Sensibility in Eighteenth-Century Culture explores the burgeoning eighteenth-century fascination with the human body as an eloquent, expressive object. This wide-ranging study examines the role of the body within a number of cultural arenas - particularly oratory, the theatre and the novel - and charts the efforts of projectors and reformers who sought to exploit the textual potential of the body for the public assertion of modern politeness. Paul Goring shows how diverse writers and performers including David Garrick, James Fordyce, Samuel Richardson, Sarah Fielding and Laurence Sterne were involved in the construction of new ideals of physical eloquence - bourgeois, sentimental ideals which stood in contrast to more patrician, classical bodily modes. Through innovative readings of fiction and contemporary manuals on acting and public speaking, Goring reveals the ways in which the human body was treated as an instrument for the display of sensibility and polite values.

Fashionably Ill

Fashionably Ill PDF Author: Kelly J. Meeboer
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781124591490
Category : Diseases in literature
Languages : en
Pages : 68

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Book Description
This thesis examines the changing discourse of sensibility in literature and journalism, from the mid-eighteenth century to the end of the nineteenth century. I highlight the changing attitudes about sensibility and empathy, and the impact these changing ideals had on class relations of the period. I examine sensibility in several literary works including The Man of Feeling, Persuasion, and Wuthering Heights, and focus in my last chapter on class issues related to sensibility as seen in the literary and journalistic works of social exploration. This thesis argues that mid-eighteenth century notions of sensibility were swiftly co-opted by the upper class and displayed as a physical indication of refinement. While previous notions of sensibility included a refined individual's reaction to those less fortunate than himself, new ideas about the discourse negated any interaction with the actually ill. Illness became an expectation for refined upper-class individuals, but was often performed.

Sensibility and Female Poetic Tradition, 1780–1860

Sensibility and Female Poetic Tradition, 1780–1860 PDF Author: Claire Knowles
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317057244
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 307

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Book Description
Arguing that the end of the eighteenth-century witnessed the emergence of an important female poetic tradition, Claire Knowles analyzes the poetry of several key women writing between 1780 and 1860. Knowles provides important context by demonstrating the influence of the Della Cruscans in exposing the constructed and performative nature of the trope of sensibility, a revelation that was met with critical hostility by a literary culture that valorised sincerity. This sets the stage for Charlotte Smith, who pioneers an autobiographical approach to poetic production that places increased emphasis on the connection between the poet's physical body and her body of work. Knowles shows the poets Susan Evance, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, and Elizabeth Barrett-Browning advancing Smith's poetic strategy as they seek to elicit a powerful sympathetic response from readers by highlighting a connection between their actual suffering and the production of poetry. From this environment, a specific tradition in female poetry arises that is identifiable in the work of twentieth-century writers like Sylvia Plath and continues to pertain today. Alongside this new understanding of poetic tradition, Knowles provides an innovative account of the central role of women writers to an emergent late eighteenth-century mass literary culture and traces a crucial discursive shift that takes place in poetic production during this period. She argues that the movement away from the passionate discourse of sensibility in the late eighteenth century to the more contained rhetoric of sentimentality in the early nineteenth had an enormous effect, not only on female poets but also on British literary culture as a whole.

Sensibility in the Early Modern Era

Sensibility in the Early Modern Era PDF Author: Anik Waldow
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317230787
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
Sensibility in the Early Modern Era investigates how the early modern characterisation of sensibility as a natural property of the body could give way to complex considerations about the importance of affect in morality. What underlies this understanding of sensibility is the attempt to fuse Lockean sensationism with Scottish sentimentalism – being able to have experiences of objects in the world is here seen as being grounded in the same principle that also enables us to feel moral sentiments. Moral and epistemic ways of relating to the world thus blend into one another, as both can be traced to the same capacity that enables us to affectively respond to stimuli that impinge on our perceptual apparatus. This collection focuses on these connections by offering reflections on the role of sensibility in the early modern attempt to think of the human being as a special kind of sensitive machine and affectively responsive animal. Humans, as they are understood in this context, relate to themselves by sensing themselves and perpetually refining their intellectual and moral capacities in response to the way the world affects them. Responding to the world here refers to the manner in which both natural and man-made influences impact on our ability to conceptualise the animate and inanimate world, and our place within that world. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Intellectual History Review.

Sense and Sensibility

Sense and Sensibility PDF Author: Jane Austen
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description