What makes it possible for self-interest, cruelty and violence to become part of the benevolent, compassionate ideology of eighteenth-century sensibility? This book explores forms of emotional response, including sympathy, tears, swoons and melancholia through a range of eighteenth-century literary, philosophical and scientific texts.
ILDIKO CSENGEI Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the Faculty of English, University of Cambridge, UKand Fellow and Director of Studies in English at Newnham College, Cambridge, UK. Previously she taught at the University of Southampton, UK,and held an R.A. Butler Research Fellowship at Pembroke College, Cambridge. Her articles on eighteenth-century and Romantic literature appeared in Modern Language Review, Romantic Circles PraxisSeries and Studies in Romanticism.