The Making of the Sympathetic Imagination - Transformations of Sympathy in British Eighteenth-Century Philosophy and Fiction (Hardcover)

How is it that we feel with fictional characters and so approve or disapprove of their actions? For many British Enlightenment thinkers writing at a time when sympathy was the pivot of ethics as well as poetics, this question was crucial. Asserting that the notion of the sympathetic imagination prominent in Romantic criticism and poetry originates in Moral Sentimentalism, this study traces the emergence of what became a key concept of intersubjectivity. It shows how, contrary to earlier traditions, Francis Hutcheson and his disciples successively established the imagination rather than reason as the pivotal faculty through which sympathy is rendered morally effective. Writing at the interface of ethics and poetics, Adam Smith, Lord Kames and others explored the sympathetic imagination as a means of both explaining emotional reader response and discovering moral distinctions. As a result, the sentimental novel became the sight of ethical controversy. Arguing against the dominant view of research which claims that the novel of sensibility is mostly uncritically sentimental, the book demonstrates that it is precisely in this genre that the sympathetic imagination is sceptically assessed in terms of its literary and moral potential.

General

Imprint:	De Gruyter
Country of origin:	Germany
Series:	Transformationen der Antike
Release date:	July 2020
First published:	2020
Authors:	Roman Alexander Barton
Dimensions:	240 x 170mm (L x W)
Format:	Hardcover
Pages:	220
ISBN-13:	978-3-11-062401-4
Categories:	Books > Language & Literature > Literature: history & criticism > Literary studies > 16th to 18th centuries Books > Humanities > Philosophy > Western philosophy > Modern Western philosophy, c 1600 to the present > General Books > Humanities > Philosophy > Topics in philosophy > Ethics & moral philosophy > General Books > Philosophy > Topics in philosophy > Ethics & moral philosophy > General Books > Philosophy > Western philosophy > Modern Western philosophy, c 1600 to the present > General
LSN:	3-11-062401-X
Barcode:	9783110624014

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