Sentimental Fiction of the 1760s and 1770s

This chapter discusses sentimental fiction of the 1760s and 1770s. Sentimental novels of these decades are highly aware of their philosophical, figural, and generic conventions; many of them intermittently subvert moralizing, sympathizing, or feminizing reflex, whether by amplifying the textuality of feeling's representation or by foregrounding feeling's improbable excess. These novels employ sentimental discourse as the vehicle of what might be called meta-sentimental critique to query the sentimental actor's powers of judgement and, inextricably, the resemblance of sentimental and aesthetic objects. The sympathetic person's ability to determine who or what elicits feeling, and the conversion of sympathy into deracinated sensation, are addressed in Laurence Sterne's A Sentimental Journey (1768), Oliver Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield (1766), Henry Mackenzie's Julia de Roubigné (1777), and Sarah Scott's The History of Sir George Ellison (1766).