239741 The Power of Tears: the Age of Sensibility and the Scottish Roots of Extreme Emotions (S) (SoSe 2013)

Almost anyone upon hearing the word melodrama will immediately envision a swooning woman or a fit of tearful hysterics. But where does this cliché come from? This course wants to look at its origins, the novel of sensitivity and the Scottish Enlightenment. Today the Scottish philosopher Adam Smith is best known for his "Wealth of Nations", one of the World's first economic studies. When a much younger man however he had written The Theory of Moral Sentiment, which had inspired the genre of the sentimental novel. Even though the literary form and style of this genre may affect us as odd and sometimes hard to bear with, the issues it raises are rather highly topical to our present times.

Literaturangaben

Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling (Oxford UP)