In the middle of the eighteenth century, something new made itself felt in European culture - a tone or style that came to be called the sentimental. The sentimental mode went on to shape not just literature, art, music, and cinema, but people's very structures of feeling, their ways of doing and being. In what is sure to become a critical classic, "An Archaeology of Sympathy" challenges Sergei Eisenstein's influential account of Dickens and early American film by tracing the unexpected history and intricate strategies of the sentimental mode and showing how it has been reimagined over the past three centuries. James Chandler begins with a look at Frank Capra and the Capraesque in American public life, then digs back to the eighteenth century to examine the sentimental substratum underlying Dickens and early cinema alike. With this surprising move, he reveals how literary spectatorship in the eighteenth century anticipated classic Hollywood films such as "Capra's It Happened One Night", "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town", and "It's a Wonderful Life". Chandler then moves forward to romanticism and modernism - two cultural movements often seen as defined by their rejection of the sentimental - examining how authors like Mary Shelley, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf actually engaged with sentimental forms and themes in ways that left a mark on their work. Reaching from Laurence Sterne to the Coen brothers, "An Archaeology of Sympathy" casts new light on the long eighteenth century and the novelistic forebears of cinema and our modern world.

About the Author
James Chandler is the Barbara E. and Richard J. Franke Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature and the Department of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago. He is the author of several books, including England in 1819: The Politics of Literary Culture and the Case of Romantic Historicism, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

Reviews
"An Archaeology of Sympathy is cultural history of the first order. It unfolds thrillingly, as a kind of project of media archaeology, showing us in eye-opening ways the crucial roles that the sentimental mode accords to notions of virtual spectatorship and mediated feeling. I found myself fascinated by the historical argument about sentimentalism's relation to episodes of media shift. This book has changed the way I think about books and movies." (Deidre Lynch, University of Toronto)"



Book Information
ISBN 9780226034959
Author James Chandler
Format Hardback
Page Count 392
Imprint University of Chicago Press
Publisher The University of Chicago Press
Weight(grams) 737g
Dimensions(mm) 23mm * 16mm * 3mm