Sentimental Philosophy

<p>This dissertation focuses on the many tales of distressed women found in mid-eighteenthcentury</p><p>British magazines and essay serials. On the one hand I argue scenes of virtue in</p><p>distress and amatory fiction more generally demonstrate the increasing commercialization of</p><p>literature and the rise of the sentimental reader. On the other hand they reveal the periodical</p><p>writers' drive to educate readers both in and through the passions. I propose that two factors</p><p>complicate the pathos of these narratives. In the first place the periodical form was thought to</p><p>work against the arousal of vehement passions. In the second place even if such passions could</p><p>be raised in the miscellaneous format there were moral reasons why indolent distracted</p><p>periodical readers craving sympathetic identification should not be indulged. Driven by market</p><p>forces and yet constrained by the unique nature of periodical publication writers of miscellanies</p><p>responded with ingenuity to these challenges crafting and deploying literary depictions of</p><p>virtue in distress that suited this compressed and constrained medium. In part because of the</p><p>challenges and risks associated with raising powerful feelings on the limited canvas of the</p><p>periodical some periodicalists worked to suppress or otherwise complicate the most affecting</p><p>aspects of their amatory fictions. Others strove to correct the reader's passions in their operation;</p><p>and others still called into question elsewhere in their periodicals the suitability of a passionate</p><p>response.</p>