The Politics of Sensibility: Race, Gender and Commerce in the Sentimental Novel (Cambridge Studies in Romanticism, Series Number 18)

by Markman Ellis

The sentimental novel has long been noted for its liberal and humanitarian interests. In The Politics of Sensibility Markman Ellis argues that sentimental fiction also consciously participated in specific political controversies of the late eighteenth century, including emerging arguments about the ethics of slavery, the morality of commerce, and the movement to reform prostitutes. He shows that sentimental fiction was a public as well as a private genre, and that the very form of the novel was recognized as a political tool of cultural significance.

280 pages, Paperback

First published March 7, 1996

Reviews

[Nelson]

Picked this up expecting one thing and got another. Was interested to get what I hoped would be a survey of sentimentalism in the novel with respect to topics like gender and race and instead found myself immersed in a text that seeks to replace a history of ideas approach to the topic of sentimentalism with something closer to Foucauldian analysis. Groovy, but not what I was looking for. Of the arguments and chapters here, I found the opening and closing summaries of most interest, along with the careful teasing out of arguments related to Magdalen novels in a late chapter as well as some survey of Henry Brooke's A Fool of Quality. The chapters on Sterne and Sarah Scott were less interesting to this reader, though those interested in those writers may find them valuable.