CFP: States of Mind in the "Age of Sensibility"
Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies
Saskatoon, October 18-21, 2001
In reputable literary circles at mid-century, there is the distinct sense that physical sensibility may be represented as an index of moral superiority: in 1750, for example, Samuel Richardson wrote to his coterie of admirers: "fools have generally stronger Nerves, and less volatile Spirits than Men of fine Understandings." In novels of the period, paragons of sensibility such as Clarissa and Harley are simply too virtuous and too delicate to survive their own narratives, a literary fashion satirized in Jane Austen1s youthful fiction: "nothing is so delightful to one's
sensations as to hear of [another's] Misery" exclaims an early protagonist, a sentiment enacted to absurdity in Love and Friendship (1789), in which the two heroines "fainted alternately upon a sofa." Recent scholarship has given
close attention to various styles or discourses of sensibility, such as epistolary fiction, the personal letters of actual persons, travel journals, and private memoirs, thus elaborating the aesthetic evolution of sensibility. But can sensibility be properly understood when considered solely or principally as a literary phenomenon? Throughout the century, the medical profession, influenced particularly by Dr George Cheyne's The English Malady (1733, often reprinted), moved away from restraint and confinement of mental patients and towards methods of treatment which emphasized sympathy and understanding; private madhouses, like Benjamin Faulkner's, espoused a "moral management," and his colleague John Ferriar
(both a physician and literary critic), argued for "a system of mildness and conciliation," a formative moment in the history of psychotherapy. How might
literary scholars consider the rapidly changing medical formulations and treatments of emotional disturbance during the period? Were these changes running parallel or coincident to developments in literature? What were the
social cachets to be gained by proving a heightened sensibility, and how would this inform contemporary and current reading?
This panel invites papers that address any combination of questions which arise when we consider the literature of sensibility as a psychological phenomenon: studies of particular literary works or figures, approaches to methodology, even case studies, cultural studies, or medical
history will be welcomed.