Emotions Vocabulary and the Reconceptualisation of Emotions in Ann Radcliffe’s “The Italian; Or, the Confessional of the Black Penitents”
Journal Title: English Studies at NBU - Year 2019, Vol 5, Issue 1
Abstract
The article undertakes the analysis of Ann Radcliffe’s novel The Italian, or the Confessional of the Black Penitents (1797) from a history of literary emotions perspective which, I argue, yields insights into the attitudes towards emotions embedded in Radcliffe’s works. A reading of the novel from such a perspective also complements the critical studies of the artist’s engaging with the eighteenth-century cult of sensibility. The novel is read as a text that registered but also participated in the dissemination of an epistemology of emotional experience articulated in the idiom of eighteenth-century moral philosophers – Francis Hutcheson, David Hume and Adam Smith - at the same time as it retained some of the older, theology-based conceptions of passions and affections. The dynamic in which the two frameworks for understanding the emotions exist in the novel is explored through a close reading of the vocabulary in which Radcliffe rendered the emotional experiences of her fictional characters. In this reading it is the passions which are found to have been invested with a variety of meanings and attributed a range of moral valences that most noticeably foreground the movement from a generally negative towards a more complex appreciation of powerful emotions.
Authors and Affiliations
Elena Andonova-Kalapsazova
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP630122
- DOI 10.33919/esnbu.19.1.2
- Views 98
- Downloads 0
Continental Perceptions of Englishness, ‘Foreignness’ and the Global Turn - BOOK REVIEW
Book Details: Title: Continental perceptions of Englishness, ‘foreignness’ and the global turn Author: Audriana Neagu Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 120 pages ISBN-13: 978-1-4438-9599-6 ISBN-10: 1-4438-9599-7
Academic teaching in Translation and Interpreting in Russia: Student expectations and market reality
The purpose of this study is to develop a framework for translator and interpreter competence in an ever-changing professional environment and provide recommendations to improve academic teaching in translation and inter...
Looking for Heteroglossia and Chronotope in New York and London: Pacino and Loncraine’s Adaptations of Richard III
The relationship between a cinematic adaptation and its literary source has sparked scholarly debates in the field of adaptation studies. Developed by the Russian literary critic, Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975), dialogism c...
The American Civil War as a social revolution: the Enlightenment, providential consciousness and changes in moral perception
This article analyses Enlightenment ideas and nation-making practices in the American Civil War and pre-War civil societies. It analyses African American mobilization and the abolitionist movement, and Lincoln’s role in...
Alice in the Wonderland of Science: Intertextual Figures in Scientific Articles
Since numerous scientific and mathematical concepts can unsurprisingly be found in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the book itself has been a great source of inspiration for many scientists. This paper gives an overvie...