Sentimental realism: Poverty and the ethics of empathy, 1832--1867
"Sentimental Realism: Poverty and the Ethics of Empathy, 1832-1867" reassesses Victorian social problem literature in light of emerging research on the social and ethical function of reading. In the years between the first two Reform bills, influential authors and artists including Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, Charles Kingsley, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Caroline Norton, Thomas Hood, and Richard Redgrave documented and imagined poverty for a largely middle- and upper-class audience. Integrating characteristic elements of sentimentalism and realism, the texts they produced were predicated on the assumption that narratives can change the attitudes and beliefs of individual readers and the social and political policies of a nation. Modern criticism has typically dismissed these objectives as naively optimistic, but new research in psychology and cognitive science confirms that narrative texts have a significant impact on readers' "real-world" beliefs and behaviors.^
Downloadable Article, English, 2008