Dickens And The Sentimental Tradition: Fielding, Richardson, Sterne, Goldsmith, Sheridan, Lamb Hardcover

New

Valerie Purton

Dickens and the sentimental tradition' is a timely study of the 'sentimental' in dickens's novels, which places them in the context of the tradition of fielding, richardson, sterne, goldsmith, sheridan and lamb. This study re-evaluates dickens's presentation of emotion - first within the eighteenth-century tradition and then within the dissimilar nineteenth-century tradition - as part of a complex literary heritage that enables him to critique nineteenth-century society. The book sheds light on the construction of feelings and of the 'good heart', ideas which resonate with current critical debates about literary 'affect'. As the text argues, such an analysis reveals sentimentalism to be a crucial element in fully understanding the achievement of dickens and his contemporaries.

9780857284181

English

Anthem Press

15 Aug 2012

218

Valerie purton is reader in victorian literature at anglia ruskin university in cambridge.

Purton draws upon an impressive array of eighteenth-century texts to explore how dickens' own definition of sentimentality was defined and informed by his readings and mis-readings of these works and convincingly argues that while eighteenth-century sentimentalism was closely bound up with anarchic humour and earthly concerns, dickens' sentimentalism is an attempt to deny the physical in order to present all human experience in spiritual terms. Purton rattles through dickens' work at a swift pace. Each selected example is illuminating. The clear and elegant prose and logical and perceptive analysis makes the book appealing and accessible to scholars and students alike.' - Katherine faulkner, 'the history of emotions blog'