This volume opens a dialogue between eighteenth-century passions and twenty-first century understandings of emotion, as revealed by psychological research into human emotions, and sociological studies of emotions and 'the media'. It unites literary scholars, historians, psychologists, and philosophers in an exploration of modes of community or expressions of self and feeling that surfaced in print culture during the decades between the 1690s and the 1780s. The individual essays explore ways in which 'authentic' passions came to be conceived and performed in a range of environments, from popular novels and the new journalism, through the philosophical studies of major figures in the Scottish Enlightenment, to last words, aesthetics, and plastic surgery. The result is a book that offers fresh historical perspectives on sympathy and public opinion and also considers critically how collective emotions contributed to political stability and moral improvement.
| Acknowledgements |
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vii | |
| Notes on Contributors |
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viii | |
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Part I The Challenge of the Passions to Eighteenth-Century Studies |
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1 Emotional Light on Eighteenth-Century Print Culture |
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3 | (17) |
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2 Psychological Perspectives on Emotion in Groups |
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20 | (27) |
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Part II Sympathy, Improvement, and the Formation of Virtual Communities |
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3 The Emotional Contents of Swift's saeva indignatio |
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47 | (21) |
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4 `Love, Marriages, Mistresses, and the Like': Daniel Defoe's Scandal Club and an Emotional Community in Print |
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68 | (18) |
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5 Eliza Haywood's Progress through the Passions |
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86 | (19) |
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6 That `Tremendous' Mr Dennis: The Sublime, Common Sense, and Criticism |
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105 | (17) |
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7 Adam Smith and the Theatre in Moral Sentiments |
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122 | (23) |
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Part III Performing the Self: Communicating Feelings and Identifying Authentic Humanity |
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8 `Off Dropped the Sympathetic Snout': Shame, Sympathy, and Plastic Surgery at the Beginning of the Long Eighteenth Century |
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145 | (20) |
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9 `Acting It as She Reads': Affective Impressions in Polly Honeycombe |
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165 | (18) |
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10 Framing Suicidal Emotions in the English Popular Press, 1750--80 |
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183 | (20) |
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11 Passions, Perceptions, and Motives: Fault-Lines in Hutcheson's Account of Moral Sentiment |
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203 | (20) |
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12 Anatomist and Painter: Hume's Struggles as a Sentimental Stylist |
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223 | (22) |
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13 Printed Passion: Sympathy, Satire, and the Translation of Homer (1675--1720) |
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245 | (21) |
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| Select Bibliography of Secondary Sources |
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266 | (14) |
| Index |
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280 | |
David Lemmings is Professor of History at the University of Adelaide, Australia, and Leader of the Change Program in the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions. He has published widely on the history of crime, law and media in eighteenth-century Britain.
Heather Kerr is Senior Lecturer in the discipline of English and Creative Writing at the University of Adelaide, Australia, and an Associate Investigator in the Australian Research Council Centre for the History of Emotions. She has published in the areas of early modern drama and poetry, law and literature, ecocriticism and contemporary cultural studies.
Robert Phiddian is Associate Professor of English and Deputy Dean of the School of Humanities at Flinders University, Australia. He is author of Swift's Parody (1995) and thirty other publications, principally on eighteenth-century literature and contemporary Australian political cartooning.
