Literary Representations: Sentimentalism in U.S.-American Literature and Culture - Detailseite

Sentimentality, today, is understood as an exaggerated and superficial display of emotions, an outdated gesture towards overwhelming feelings of sympathy. Yet in the nineteenth century, based on the assumption that the power of intense emotion creates a ‘common’ humanity and builds a ‘good’ character, the sentimental mode was very popular in U.S. fiction, in novels and short stories. Through tales of loss, suffering, moral dilemmas and a loss of innocence, readers of sentimental literature (particularly white and female readers) were instructed in how to be morally infallible. In this course, we will read sentimental literature of the nineteenth century. We will start with the writings of authors such as Walt Whitman, Harriet Jacobs and Susan Warner before turning to expressions of sentimentality in twentieth-century and contemporary media and storytelling: to melodrama, soap operas/telenovelas and reality television.