Sympathetic Sentiments : Affect, Emotion and Spectacle in the Modern World
Sympathetic Sentiments : Affect, Emotion and Spectacle in the Modern World
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Author(s): Jervis, John
ISBN No.: 9781472576378
Pages: 288
Year: 201501
Format: Trade Cloth (Hard Cover)
Price: $ 220.80
Dispatch delay: Dispatched between 7 to 15 days
Status: Available

"Sympathetic Sentiments "develops an innovative interdisciplinary framework to explore the implications of living in a 'culture of feeling' that seems ill at ease with itself, one in which 'sentiments' are frequently denounced for being 'sentimental' and self-indulgent. This is traced back to the inheritance of the eighteenth century, enabling us to identify a distinctive 'spectacle of sympathy' in which sympathy seems inherently to entail public forms of expression whereby being 'on show' is both a condition of the authenticity of such affects "and" of their capacity to be masked and simulated - hence stimulating controversy, but also the exploration of the vicarious dimensions of modern experience so central to modern literature, art and culture. The implications of all this are further explored in the context of current debates over the display of trauma as the language of sympathetic engagement, and the alleged prevalence of 'compassion fatigue' in the era of media sensationalism. Overall, the book uncovers the patterns that both reproduce our capacity for 'sympathetic sentiments' while revealing the inherent underlying tensions.


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