Purnell, Carolyn (Author)
This dissertation provides a newly formulated concept of sensibility that takes seriously its status as a culture that permeated all aspects of eighteenth-century life. Sensibility, which has been long-studied as a dominant concept in the eighteenth century, has typically been analyzed only in terms of its affective or physiological implications, and for the most part, scholars have focused on texts that incorporate the concept rather than on the practices and reforms that sensibility inspired. This dissertation outlines four major characteristics of sensibility that existed across generic lines. These characteristics take into account the medical, philosophical, and literary contexts in which sensibility played a central part, but also make clear the pervasiveness of the concept in other areas, like commerce, politics, and education. Through the lens of the stable characteristics, sensibility is recast as a discourse that played a significant role in eighteenth-century debates on and projects for social management. With reference to sensory manipulation, thinkers laid out new social ideals and expressed hopes and concerns about the role of the individual within society. The first two chapters begin with the two fields of thought that have most often formed the core of analyses of sensibility: sensible medicine and sensationalist philosophy. Taking these fields as the point of departure, the dissertation resituates sensibility according to a set of characteristics that it shared across its many literary, medical, and philosophical contexts, offering a new formulation of the concept that is versatile enough to permit the clear identification of the discourse and the types of thought it enabled. The last three chapters investigate cases in which the discourse of sensibility was operative, charting the way in which it spread beyond its technical domains to become a central component in broader discussions of daily life, sociability, and skill. These chapters show that sensibility served as a key language for eighteenth-century debates on and projects for social management. With reference to sensibility and its potential alteration, reformers laid out visions of social ideals and expressed hopes and concerns about the role of the individual within these visions.
...MoreDescription Cited in Dissertation Abstracts International-A 75/04(E), Oct 2014. Proquest Document ID: 1492138456.
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