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WiSe 12/13: Novel Feelings: Representing Emotion at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

James Dorson

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Novel Feelings: Representing Emotion at the Turn of the Twentieth Century Toward the end of the nineteenth century, Victorian ideals and conventions were starting to crumble under the pressure of new social realities. Emerging theories in science and philosophy were shifting earlier preoccupations with human reason and autonomy toward a less sanguine vision of human nature as a teeming hotbed of instincts and emotions. While the "discovery" of uncontrollable emotions beneath what then came to be seen as the "veneer of civilization" held a promise of authenticity and renewal, it also posed a threat to social order. Neither the Victorian moral order nor the increasingly disruptive business cycle of laissez-faire capitalism seemed tenable anymore, but what was to take their place? What would happen if the smoldering passions of the people were repressed, and what would happen if they were unleashed? This class will focus on the emergence of these newly revealed emotions, both on their disruptive and liberating potential, and how they were negotiated in popular fiction at the time. Through close readings of novels by Stephen Crane (The Red Badge of Courage), Frank Norris (Vandover and the Brute), Theodore Dreiser (Sister Carrie), Edith Wharton (The House of Mirth), and Jack London (The Iron Heel), we will examine what new literary strategies were used to represent, evoke, and contain emotion. In order to contextualize our readings, in the first part of the class we will read excerpts from contemporary writings on emotion (Darwin, Nietzsche, and William James), as well as essays and excerpts from more recent cultural theories of emotion and psychology by Catherine Lutz, Peter Stearns, Joel Pfister, Robert Solomon, and Eva Illouz. close