American Literature / Unit 9 AML 0817 short lesson, about 20 seconds
Sentimental Fiction and Its Political Work
Captions available
The idea
Sentimental fiction aims at the reader's tears and treats feeling as a moral instrument: if you feel a mother's loss, you will act. The mode dominated mid-century American publishing, was written mostly by women, and was dismissed for a century as the opposite of serious literature.
In practice
Tears, aimed at a political end.
Where people slip
The dismissal has itself been reconsidered.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
Something wrong in this lesson? Flag it