Sentimentalism in Laurence Sterne’s and Mary Wollstonecraft’s work
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Course
English Literature 1650-2000
Institution
Universiteit Utrecht (UU)
Book
A Sentimental Journey
It is obvious that the concept of sentimentalism is present in Laurence Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey, with regard to the title of his work. About three decades after the publication of Sterne’s novel, Mary Wollstonecraft’s Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denm...
Sentimentalism in Laurence Sterne’s and Mary Wollstonecraft’s work
It is obvious that the concept of sentimentalism is present in Laurence Sterne’s A Sentimental
Journey, with regard to the title of his work. About three decades after the publication of
Sterne’s novel, Mary Wollstonecraft’s Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden,
Norway, and Denmark was published. It is not surprising that her work also contained
sentimentalism, as this was the major literary genre in eighteenth-century England. According
to William Reddy, the concept of sentimentalism can be defined as follows:
Sentimentalism taught that pity, benevolence, love, and gratitude were expressions of
the same natural sensitivity, the root of morality, and the foundation of all social
bonds, and that stimulating these feelings was the best protection against unruly
passions and a necessary training for virtue (127).
In other words, sentimentalism is associated with emotions, which were considered protective
against evil. Now, the questions are how texts are assigned the label of “sentimental” and how
they can be recognized. In an academic article, Tom Horton, Kristen Taylor, Bei Yu, and Xin
Xiang’s main purpose is the latter. They mentioned some important characteristics of
sentimental fiction:
Sentimental texts are a particularly good place to look at how a group of texts may
exhibit certain recognizable features; sentimental fiction uses conventional plot
development, stock characters, and didactic authorial interventions. The emphasis is
the exposure of how a text works to induce specific responses in the reader [ . . . ];
readers do not expect to be surprised. Instead, readers encounter certain keywords in a
certain order for a sentimental text to build the expected response (81).
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