Eighteenth-Century Literary Affections

218 Pages·2020·1.784 MB·English

by  Louise Joy

PALGRAVE STUDIES IN
AFFECT THEORY AND LITERARY CRITICISM
Eighteenth-Century
Literary Affections
Louise Joy
Palgrave Studies in Affect Theory and Literary
Criticism
Series Editors
Joel Faflak
Western University
London, ON, Canada
Richard C. Sha
Literature Department
American University
Washington, DC, USA
The recent surge of interest in affect and emotion has productively crossed
disciplinary boundaries within and between the humanities, social sci-
ences, and sciences, but has not often addressed questions of literature and
literary criticism as such. The first of its kind, Palgrave Studies in Affect
Theory and Literary Criticism seeks theoretically informed scholarship
that examines the foundations and practice of literary criticism in relation
to affect theory. This series aims to stage contemporary debates in the
field, addressing topics such as: the role of affective experience in literary
composition and reception, particularly in non-Western literatures; exami-
nations of historical and conceptual relations between major and minor
philosophies of emotion and literary experience; and studies of race, class,
gender, sexuality, age, and disability that use affect theory as a primary
critical tool.
Editorial board members:
Louis Charland (Western University)  – History and Philosophy of
Affective Terms
Patrick Colm Hogan (University of Connecticut, Storrs) – Cognitive and
Affective Science of World Literature
Holly Crocker (University of South Carolina) – Medieval Literature and
Affect Theory
David James (University of Birmingham, UK) –Modernism, the
Contemporary Novel, and Affect Theory
Julia Lupton (University of California, Irvine) – Renaissance and Theatre
Kate Singer (Mount Holyoke College) – Affect and Romanticism
Jane Thrailkill (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) – Affect and
American Realism
Donald Wehrs (Auburn University)
More information about this series at
http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14653
Louise Joy
Eighteenth-Century
Literary Affections
Louise Joy
University of Cambridge
Cambridge, UK
Palgrave Studies in Affect Theory and Literary Criticism
ISBN 978-3-030-46007-5 ISBN 978-3-030-46008-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46008-2
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020
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A
cknowledgements
This book began life many years ago as a doctoral thesis, and I am
indebted to Mary Jacobus for supervising my research and teaching me
so much along the way, and to Peter de Bolla and Andrew Bennett, my
examiners, for their encouragement and immensely constructive advice. I
would like to acknowledge too the generosity and pertinence of the com-
ments given by the manuscript’s two peer reviewers, whose suggestions I
found exceptionally valuable. Sarah Annes Brown, Thomas Dixon,
Caroline Gonda, Pam Hirsch, Nigel Leask, Emma Mason, Adam Rounce,
Michelle Spring, Morag Styles and David Whitley supplied guidance and
expertise at crucial stages. For helping me to make sense of the eigh-
teenth century through conversation and friendship, then and now, I
would also like to thank Liz Appel, Shahidha Bari, Rebecca Barr,
Clémentine Beauvais, Rowan Rose Boyson, Georgina Evans, Alexander
Freer, Sarah Haggarty, Katie Halsey, Daisy Hay, Jessica Lim, Suzanne
Lynch, Rachel Malkin, Jane Partner, Sophie Read, Alexander Regier,
Paul Vlitos, Marcus Waithe, Kate Wakely-M ulroney and Jane Wright. For
their many forms of support during my PhD years and since, I would like
to thank my parents, Hilary and Martin Joy, who have always taken pride
in whatever I do.
Work for the original dissertation was made possible by financial assis-
tance provided by Cambridge University; by Newnham College,
Cambridge; and by the Cambridge University English Faculty. In the
v
vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
intervening years, I have found warmth, laughter, practical support and
intellectual freedom at Homerton College, University of Cambridge, for
which I count myself unusually lucky.
Finally, of course, thank you to Richard, Zachary and Toby, the objects
of my affections.
c
ontents
1 I ntroduction: Affective Knowledge 1
References 11
Part I Emotional Order 15
2 Model Affections 17
2.1 In the Body 18
2.2 In the Afterlife 22
2.3 Nowhere 33
References 52
3 Literary Passions 57
3.1 Poetry in Motion 58
3.2 Philosophical Abstraction 62
3.3 Affective Taste 67
3.4 Artificial Emotional Intelligence 79
References 92
Part II Literary Experience 97
4 Novel Feelings 99
4.1 Intimacy 101
vii
viii CONTENTS
4.2 A lienation 118
References 138
5 Translated Emotions 143
5.1 Moral Transpositions 144
5.2 Tearful Transmissions 156
References 169
6 Poetic Pathos 173
6.1 In Suspension 174
6.2 In Order 187
6.3 In Mourning 191
References 203
7 Epilogue: Literary Affections 207
References 214
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: Affective Knowledge
‘There is no truth more universally known’, writes Henry Home, Lord
Kames, the eminent Scottish Enlightenment man of letters, ‘than that
tranquillity and sedateness are the proper state of mind for accurate per-
ception and cool deliberation. […] Passion […] hath such influence over
us, as to give a false light to all its objects’ (Henry Home 1785, I. 153).
As Kames observes, reason’s necessary dominance over the passions is one
of the most axiomatic precepts of the age. It is asserted and reasserted
throughout eighteenth-century writing. The frequency with which this
maxim is reiterated during the period gives the impression that its viability
and desirability are accepted as straightforward. ‘What Reason weaves, by
Passion is undone,’ proclaims Alexander Pope in his Essay on Man (Pope
1734, II, l. 42). Pope’s neat wisdom reappears at the end of the century in
a sermon by the Reverend James Archer, who warns his congregation of
‘the conflict of tumultuous passion warring against our reason’ (Archer
1794, 60). Pronouncements such as these, which proffer what Kames
refers to as ‘truth’, assert that which is purportedly ‘universally known’
with aphoristic certainty. But does the word ‘known’ here signify that
which is discovered from experience (empirically) or that which is believed
in theory (conjecturally)? Does the word ‘truth’ refer to the idea that rea-
son should govern passion or to the utterance of this idea? It is hard to
discern whether Kames’s statement, like Pope’s a few decades earlier and
Archer’s a few decades later, functions as a philosophical proposition or a
critical observation; whether the knowledge on offer is their own or a
© The Author(s) 2020 1
L. Joy, Eighteenth-Century Literary Affections, Palgrave Studies
in Affect Theory and Literary Criticism,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46008-2_1