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Full Description
At the turn of the nineteenth century, writers arguing for the abolition of the slave trade and the emancipation of those in bondage used the language of sentiment and the political ideals of the Enlightenment to make their case. This collection investigates the rhetorical features and political complexities of the culture of sentimentality as it grappled with the material realities of transatlantic slavery. Are the politics of sentimental representation progressive or conservative? What dynamics are in play at the site of suffering? What is the relationship of the spectator to the spectacle of the body in pain? The contributors take up these and related questions in essays that examine poetry, plays, petitions, treatises and life-writing that engaged with contemporary debates about abolition.
Contents
Contents: Introduction: The bonds of sentiment, Stephen Ahern; Part 1 Sympathy's Empire: Capitalism and slavery, once again with feeling, George Boulukos; Acts of sympathy: abolitionist poetry and transatlantic identification, Tobias Menely. Part 2 Nation, Narration, Emancipation: Commerce, sentiment, and free air: contradictions of abolitionist rhetoric, Anthony John Harding; Sympathy, nerve physiology, and national degeneration in Anna Letitia Barbauld's Epistle to William Wilberforce, Mary A. Waters. Part 3 Spectacles of Suffering: To force a tear: British abolitionism and the 18th-century stage, Brycchan Carey; 'Pity for the poor Africans': William Cowper and the limits of abolitionist affect, Joanne Tong; 'We beg Your Excellency': the sentimental politics of abolitionist petitions in the late 18th century, Christine Levecq. Part 4 Sentimental Bondage: The contradictions of racialized sensibility: gender, slavery and the limits of sympathy, Jamie Rosenthal; The cruelty of slavery, the cruelty of freedom: colonization and the politics of humaneness in the early republic, Margaret Abruzzo; Selected bibliography; Index.
