Abstract:
It is hard, in this day and age, to imagine a time in which television and the internet di not exixst; a time in which the only way to "see" a story was to attend a play, instead of having a barrage of images flung our way. How did the authors before the advent of mass-media manage to properly transport the images in their heads onto paper, in order to transmit their ideas to other people? Specifically, how did the literature of sentiment develop, when the multitude of human emotions is much too vast to be contained by ink and paper? This dissertation will explore the role of sentimental novels in the developement of literature, with particular focus on the author Charlotte Lennox and her novel "The History of Harriot and Sophia", by analyzing the criticism about the late eighteen century on the subjects of social issues, literature, and feminism.
