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In this thesis I argue that a leading sentimentalist theory, Rational Sentimentalism, faces the Problem of Superfluity because the evaluative properties to which certain emotions are responses can be defined independently of examining those emotional responses. In other words, the connection to value that Rational Sentimentalism aims for fails to obtain. I show that at least one such emotion, disgust, is influenced by higher cognition to a degree incompatible with Rational Sentimentalism avoiding the Problem of Superfluity. I conclude by suggesting ways in which other emotions are structurally similar to disgust, and therefore face the same problem in being incorporated into Rational Sentimentalism.

This dissertation investigates the properties of sentimentality by analyzing the move in British literature from a fascination with heightened affect to a celebration of Gothic excess during the period 1768--1796. This study develops an account of sentimentality as a model of agency, theorizes the relationship of sentimental ideology to sentimental narrative form, and traces continuities between the sentimental and Gothic modes through an examination of texts that share a preoccupation with the aesthetics and ethics of sentimentalism. By examining representations of sentimental agency in prose fiction narratives by Laurence Sterne, Henry Mackenzie, Ann Radcliffe, and Matthew Lewis, this dissertation argues that sentimentalism was a contradictory cultural discourse rooted in an unstable complex of assumptions about the ontological status and political implications of social identity. Sentimental narrative dramatizes the parodic potential of a code of behavior predicated on the display of a character's virtue in sympathetic response to suffering. Intrinsic to this display is a dynamic tension between the altruistic ideals of the sentimental ethos and the aestheticized, exploitative and self-consciously theatrical mode that often marks its practice. Torn between disinterest and self-interest, between public duty and private desire, the sentimentalist is a conflicted figure whose aggressive aesthetic is increasingly shown to be at once comically bathetic and darkly menacing.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Delaware, 2008. / Principal faculty advisor: Mary Jean Pfaelzer, Dept. of English. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, The Dept. of English Language and Literature, Jun. 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 175-190). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (doctoral)--Hamburg, 1971. / Vita. Includes bibliography (v. 2, p. 239-270).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Rhode Island, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 177-183).

The thesis argues that two ways in which we can consider empathy’s role in ethics are fundamentally flawed because they fail to take into account the myriad ways in which empathy can be affected and influenced by our motivations. I apply what I call ‘the motivation objection’ to these two views. This has three aspects: (1) reliability: because empathy can be affected and influenced by our motivations, empathizing does not always lead to the right results; (2) function: because it can be affected and influenced by our motivations, empathy is not sufficient for various functions; (3) circularity: because it can be affected and influenced by our motivations, empathy cannot be used to define or explain certain aspects of morality in a non-circular way. The two ways of considering empathy’s role in ethics are what I call constitutive views, according to which empathy in some way constitutes, or is the foundation for, morality, and instrumental views, according to which empathy is of instrumental value in morality. I apply the motivation objection to three constitutive views, two historical and one contemporary, each of which is a sentimentalist theory of morality with empathy (or sympathy, in the case of the historical theories) at its heart. These are the sentimentalist moral theories of David Hume, Adam Smith and Michael Slote. I then apply the motivation objection to instrumental views of empathy’s role in ethics, before defending one particular instrumental view, according to which empathy can play a positive role in morality when integrated with virtue, and the virtue of compassion in particular.

Despite the recognized importance of Anna Letitia Barbauld, Maria Edgeworth, and Charlotte Smith as commentators on 1790s radicalism, pedagogy, and novel conventions, their writings for children and for adults tend to be studied separately. Indeed, despite each writer's familiarity with the others' work, these figures are rarely discussed together. I argue that studying these authors' cross-generic works using a comparative approach reveals the ways in which novels and children's books have informed and influenced each other, both in their reciprocal developments and as distinct genres. I further argue that even as the juvenile fiction of Barbauld, Edgeworth, and Smith seems rather tamely oriented toward the integration of natural history with conduct lessons, the genre was in fact a vital means by which each writer weighed her own social-welfare and aesthetic priorities within contexts of political upheaval.

Experimental novels written from 1984-2000 by authors associated with Generation X collectively struggle with common sense notions of masculinity in their various decades at the end of the twentieth century. Relying on confessional, first-person narration, first novels written by white men stage a critical engagement of outdated patriarchal norms in an effort to produce a more progressive masculinity based on sentimentality. In the 1980s, McInerney and Ellis novels, Bright Lights, Big City and Less Than Zero chronicle the struggles of empty, yuppie men who cannot make connections with their peers due to their emotionally devoid lives. By the 1990s, Douglas Coupland proposes a new, sentimental masculinity with his protagonist Andy who narrates Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture. Andy creates sympathetic connections with his peers through the act of confessional storytelling. Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club does similar cultural work as Coupland’s novel by creating an anti-sentimental, nameless narrator so bereft of emotion that he creates a hypermasculine alter-ego and violent groups to avoid the emotional emptiness of his life. Finally, Dave Eggers’s A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000) produces the most progressive, evolved masculine narrator, Dave, who spends the entire novel coming to terms with the death of his parents while raising his brother as a son. The novels, in both content and form, become more complex and richer reflecting the development of their protagonists and their philosophical arguments for progressing into sentimental men.