Here a Captive Heart Busted: Studies in the Sentimental Journey of Modern Literature - Hardcover

Fulweiler, Howard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0823214958 ISBN 13: 9780823214952

Publisher: Fordham University Press, 1993

Synopsis

Contemporary readers who look at late-eigteenth-century or nineteenth-century imaginative literature must be struch by a phenomenon that is nearly universal in the period: the powerful presence of sentimentality. An often overlooked fact is that "Sentimentality" not only is a critical term, but is limited to a historical period, from roughly 1700 to the present. Fulweiler's hypothesis is that setimentality in writing has played a crucial part in shaping Western consciousness. As a study of evolution of consciousness-rather than the history of ideas- the argument grows out of the work of philosophers such as Ernst Cassirer and Susanne Langer, historical philosophers including R.G. Collingwood, Thomas Kuhn, and Michel Foucault, historically oriented literary critics such as Erich Auerbach, and finally the eclectic writing of Owen Barfield.

Fulweiler's hypothesis is that the general consciousness of Western society has undergone severe shocks as a result of the loss-and sometimes repression- of an older human awareness of what anthropologists have called "participation," a term that may be defined as a non-sensory link between human beings and nature. This loss of participation has become gradually apparant with the erosiion of its visible emblems: The Church (with its supporting Law); the extended family, as visualized in feudal, hierarchical theories of society; and finally the nineteeth-century ideal, the nuclear family, with its sacred location, the home, and its glorified Proprietress, the Woman. Sentimentality emerges, then, as a desperate, if often illegitimate, attempt to regain what has been lost, so that imaginative literature of the nineteenth century, even very good literature, is overwhelmed by domestic sentimentality. In the twentieth century it has been heavily, although covertly, affected by a sexual sentimentality of the previous era.

This sentimental journey is traced by focusing on six major writers: Tennyson and Dickens as the giants of Victorian domestic sentimentality, Hopkins and Hardy as transitional figures in whom the sentimental tropes of the ninteenth century are moving toward the sexual sentimentality of the twentieth, Lawrence and Eliot as representatives, in different ways, of that era. This multi-faceted study will be of considerable interest to specialists across a number of fields including literature, history, psychology, philosophy, and religious studies.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

Seeming to stand as a wall between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, sentimentality is almost a defining characteristic of the greatest literary figures of the former. But reflection reveals that sentimentality is perhaps the most common of all literary modes of the twentieth century as well, disguised in the latter case by an intense obsession with sexuality. This book attempts to understand sentimentality as an important event in the developing history of Western consciousness, the state of which still parallels the condition of Mark Twain's Jim (in Huckberry Finn), imprisoned in a flimsy slave cabin of false sentiment: "Here a captive heart busted". The author traces this sentimental journey of modern literature by focusing on six major writers - Tennyson and Dickens as the giants of Victorian domestic sentimentality, Hopkins and Hardy as transitional figures in whom the sentimental tropes of the nineteenth century are moving toward the sexual sentimentality of the twentieth, Lawrence and Eliot as representatives in different ways of the sexual sentimentality of the twentieth century. The hypothesis of the book is that the general consciousness of Western society has undergone severe shocks as a result of the loss - and sometimes repression - of an older human awareness of what anthropologists have called "participation", a term which may be defined as a non-sensory link between human beings and nature. This loss of participation has become gradually apparent with the erosion of its visible emblems: the Church (with its supporting intellectual bulwark of the divine origin and purposes of Natural Law); the extended family, as visualized in feudal, hierarchical theories ofsociety; and finally the nineteenth-century ideal, the nuclear family, with its sacred location, the Home, and its glorified Proprietress, the Woman. The argument grows out of the work of philosophers like Ernst Cassirer and Susanne Langer, anthropologists like Mircea Eliade and Lucien Levy-Bruhl, historical philosophers like R. G. Collingwood, Thomas Kuhn, and Michel Foucault, historically oriented literary critics like Erich Auerbach, and finally the eclectic writing of Owen Barfield. The book closes with a brief epilogue, which focuses on Toni Morrison's Beloved, a fascinating apotheosis of earlier sentimental themes. The conflict between "belonging" and "freedom" and between "head" and "heart" continues in the twentieth century, as it grew out of the nineteenth. Finally, the author calls for exchanging the literature of sentimentality for a literature of freedom, truth, and feeling, a literature which may serve as an underground railroad for Western consciousness to begin its escape from the slavery of sentimentality to find a real knowledge of the heart.

About the Author:

Howard W. Fulweiler is Professor of English at the University of Missouri-Columbia.

About this edition

• Publisher: Fordham University Press
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0823214958
• ISBN 13: 9780823214952
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 207