Abstract

This thesis addresses points of connection among sentimental texts of the long eighteenth century that have previously been read as inhabiting distinct national literary traditions. Transforming Sentiment brings together the works of Samuel Richardson, Laurence Sterne, Sarah Robinson Scott, Charles Brockden Brown, Jane Austen, James Fenimore Cooper and Olaudah Equiano in order to demonstrate how seemingly disparate texts can be productively read to destabilize homogenous nationalist literary histories. Transforming Sentiment argues that these British and American sentimental authors can be understood and linked together in light of theories of sympathy and disinterestedness articulated in Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments and specifically embodied by his figure of the impartial spectator. However, these theories resist being confined within national boundaries, and, consequently, these texts may be newly read as part of a transatlantic exchange, an exchange that alters the way we read sentimental texts: not as ineffective effusions of feeling but as possible alternate histories with transcultural potential. This thesis demonstrates how these authors adapt and interrogate the figure of the impartial spectator to think about the individual and the nation’s relationship to the other—from questioning imperial conquest, through models of benevolent paternalism, to more cosmopolitan views of global citizenship. By situating these texts within a transatlantic context, this thesis reveals the internal tensions within these authors’ texts that stem from an awareness of their global membership. It also demonstrates how this transatlantic intellectual exchange shapes the way these authors think about identity, the scope of moral obligation, and politics of empire. Transforming Sentiment argues that these authors share a collective discourse of sentiment that helps them reimagine traditional hierarchies of power and reductive social categories —for instance, these texts question the divisions between those who are recognized by the state as political participants with legal rights from those who are not. However, they mould the concepts of sympathy and disinterestedness to promote social reform according to the needs of their historical moment. By adapting Smith’s sentimental theories, these authors question constructions of nation and embrace the potential for a global theory of morality that the transatlantic offers.