Includes bibliographical references (pages 439-526) and index.
Contents:
Intyroduction: The history of emotion -- Spirits strong in hope (1. The unlooked-for dawn ; 2. The distribution of human happiness ; 3. A revolution in female manners ; 4. The inhumanity of kings) Hope discourages (5. The purifying alchemy of education ; 6. Neck or nothing ; 7. The most delightful theory of an island ; 8. The orgasm of the Revolution ; 9. The new philosophy of air ; 10. Come mow, ye golden times) Disappointments sore (11. Falling into the common lot of humanity ; 12. Awaking in fetters ; 13. Revolutions by mourning and accommodation ; 14. The nursery of genius) The age of despair (15. Ruling over the causes of pain and pleasure ; 16. God withdraws His protection ; 17. Treachery and desertion ; 18. The revolution of feeling)
Summary:
"In the 1790s, Britain underwent what the politician Edmund Burke called 'the most importamt of all revolutions... a revolution in sentiments'. Inspired by the bold beginnings opf the French Revolution, British radicals dreamt of founding new political worlds. The Enlightenment's wildest hopes crested in the utopian projects of optimists such as the young poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the philosophers William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, the physician Thomas Beddoes and the first photographer Thomas Wedgwood - all of whom sought to reform sex, education, commerce, politics and medicine by revolutionising attitudes to emotions and desires. But as the French Revolution descended into bloody Terror and the British government quashed radical political activities, feerish optimism turned to bleak disappointment. ... As the revolutionary proposals of 1790s British radicals collapsed, that failure resulted in a profound cultural revolution: a revolution of feeling. Every society, in every age, feels differently, and from the seismic shifts of 1790s Britain emerged the contours of our contemporary attitudes to need, longing, and emotion."--Book jacket.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.