The Politics of Sensibility
Race, Gender and Commerce in the Sentimental Novel

Explores the participation of the sentimental novel in political controversies of the late eighteenth century.

Markman Ellis (Author)

9780521604277, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 29 July 2004

280 pages, 2 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15.7 x 1.9 cm, 0.432 kg

"The Politics of Sensibility is successful within its scope....Ellis provides a practical book which will be useful to anyone working on the politics of the early novel." Jack Lynch, Novel

The sentimental novel has long been noted for its liberal and humanitarian interests, but also for its predilection for refined feeling, the privilege it accords emotion over reason, and its preference for the private over the public sphere. In The Politics of Sensibility, however, Markman Ellis argues that sentimental fiction also consciously participated in some of the most keenly contested public controversies of the late eighteenth century, including the emergence of anti-slavery opinion, discourse on the morality of commerce, and the movement for the reformation of prostitutes. By investigating the significance of political material in the fictional text, and by exploring the ways in which the novels themselves take part in historical disputes, Ellis shows that the sentimental novel was a political tool of considerable cultural significance.

1. Sensibility, history and the novel
2. 'The house of bondage': sentimentalism and the problem of slavery
3. 'Delight in misery': sentimentalism, amelioration and slavery
4. 'An easy, speedy and universal medium': canals, commerce and virtue
5. 'Recovering the path of virtue': the politics of prostitution and the sentimental novel
6. 'The dangerous tendency of novels' and the controversy of sentimentalism.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers [DSK]