Sensibility, Reading and Illustration: Spectacles and Signs in Graffigny, Marivaux and Rousseau

by Lewis; Ann

• ISBN13: 9781905981960
• ISBN10: 1905981961
• eBook ISBN(s): 9781351194655
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-11-25
• Publisher: Routledge
• More Book Details

Summary

Eighteenth-century sensibilite has always been controversial. In fact, the term itself refers to complex forms of physical and emotional responsiveness, and Lewiss study investigates the fictional exploration of various key problems of sentimental response that were at the heart of eighteenth-century moral, epistemological and aesthetic debates. These are analysed in conjunction with some of the actual (often emotional) responses that the term, its fictions and images have provoked through time, including an indispensable survey of the varying construction of sensibilite as an object of study, and the polemics subtending its definition. The verbal evocation of the visual in the form of spectacles and signs was understood in the eighteenth century as having an especially powerful impact. Lewis provides a new reading of the theme of sensibility by analysing the textual images in three best-selling novels from the mid-century: Graffignys Lettres dune Peruvienne, Marivauxs La Vie de Marianne and Rousseaus Julie. The examination of a largely neglected corpus of illustrations, understood as readings of each text, provides striking new evidence of the complexity, thematic richness and duplicity of these spectacles, whose power to provoke different reactions is perhaps their most interesting characteristic. Ann Lewis is Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Queen Mary, University of London.

Author Biography

Ann Lewis is Lecturer in French at Birkbeck, University of London.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	p. ix
List of Illustrations	p. xi
Sources and Editions	p. xvi
Introduction	p. 1
Critical Readings of Eighteenth-Century French 'Sensibility': Literary History and the History of a Word	p. 14
Sensibility in Literary History and Criticism: Constructions of a Category	p. 14
The Shifting Meanings of the Word Sensibilité in the Eighteenth Century	p. 34
The Power of Images: Sensibility, Communication, and Aesthetic Experience in Graffigny's Lettres d'une Pèruvienne	p. 50
Problems with the Passion of Pity, and Pitiful Passions: Love, Sex, and Sensibility in La Vie de Marianne	p. 77
Reading the Signs: La Vie de Marianne as a Novel of Sensibility?	p. 78
Pity, 'Love', and 'Lust': The Vocabulary of Sensibility and Libertinage	p. 87
The Passion of Pity and Pitiful Passions	p. 89
Textual Images and Visual Readings: La Vie de Marianne and its Illustrations	p. 112
(Re)Reading Sentimental Topoi, Scenes, and Spectacles in Julie	p. 163
Reading for the Part	p. 165
Narrative Causality: Forme et Signification	p. 217
Sequence and Subversion	p. 225
Conclusion	p. 257
Appendices	p. 263
Sensibilite in the Seventeenth Century	p. 263
List of illustrated volumes published 1935-46 by La Tradition	p. 266
Bibliography	p. 267
Index	p. 285
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