Overview

Rae Greiner proposes that sympathy is integral to the form of the classic nineteenth-century realist novel. Following the philosophy of Adam Smith, Greiner argues that sympathy does more than foster emotional identification with others; it is a way of thinking along with them. By abstracting emotions, feelings turn into detached figures of speech that may be shared. Sympathy in this way produces realism; it is the imaginative process through which the real is substantiated. In ""Sympathetic Realism in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction"" Greiner shows how this imaginative process of sympathy is written into three novelistic techniques regularly associated with nineteenth-century fiction: metonymy, free indirect discourse, and realist characterization. She explores the work of sentimentalist philosophers David Hume, Adam Smith, and Jeremy Bentham and realist novelists Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Joseph Conrad, and Henry James.

Full Product Details

9781421406534

Table of Contents

Reviews

Like the characters in the realist novels she analyses, Sympathetic Realism encourages us to think along with it. -- Stephanie Insley Hershinow Victoriographies The clarity of Greiner's models of both sympathy and realism is one of the most remarkable features Sympathetic Realism, but it is often through her excellent close readings that these models came alive. -- Maia McAleavey Wordsworth Circle

Author Information

Rae Greiner is an assistant professor of English at Indiana University and is coeditor of the journal Victorian Studies.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available