In mid-eighteenth-century Great Britain, the fictional works of Sarah Fielding, Samuel Richardson, Laurence Sterne, and Henry Mackenzie exemplify the discourse concerning the role of sensibility in constructing the ideal individual as well as the ideal community of individuals. These authors of sentimental novels could not resolve the contradiction between the claims of sensibility as naturally inherent in all people and the need to instruct their readers in sympathy and benevolence. The main emphasis of the cultural project of which these works are a part was to construct a masculine ideal who responded to the social problems associated with increasing commercialism and social mobility. This masculine ideal, often referred to as a man of feeling, stood in contrast to the values both of the older aristocracy and the newer mercantile interests The novel, as a literary genre, accommodates the complexity and contradictions inherent in social relations making it ideal for exposing the social conventions of the culture of which it is a part. Both M. M. Bakhtin and Wolfgang Iser argue that novels contain evaluative commentaries through which literary critics can examine their underlying thought systems for their weaknesses and their claims to universality. My examinination exposes the often contradictory ideals concerning masculine behavior and its relationship to the emotions of benevolence and sympathy that were prevalent in the philosophical, moral, medical, and novelistic discourse in mid-eighteenth-century Britain. David Simple, Sir Charles Grandison, A Sentimental Journey, and The Man of Feeling can then be seen as 'rejoinders' in the discourse of sensibility in which the authors examine the qualities of and difficulties faced by a man of feeling during this time of increasing economic, political, and social change / acase@tulane.edu
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TULANE/oai:http://digitallibrary.tulane.edu/:tulane_27689 |
| Date | January 1998 |
| Contributors | McDaniel, Ivan D (Author), Stewart, Maaja (Thesis advisor) |
| Publisher | Tulane University |
| Source Sets | Tulane University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | Access requires a license to the Dissertations and Theses (ProQuest) database., Copyright is in accordance with U.S. Copyright law |
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