Subjectivities

The chapter continues to trace attention to emotions, begun in the context of Sentimentalism and further developed in the works of the pre-Romantic period. The discovery of the self-promoted active autobiographical writing practiced by men and women throughout the century. The masonic interest in the “inner man,” evident in diary writing early in the century, survived to manifest itself in Leo Tolstoy’s intense focus on self-analysis. The chapter presents Herzen’s formidable memoir My Past and Thoughts as a work crossing the boundary between the personal and historical. The chapter then moves to examining the presentation of the self in poetry, in elegy and love lyrics.