Sentimental Figures of Empire in Eighteenth-Century Britain and France

"With considerable verve and tenacity, Lynn Festa demonstrates that the sentimental mode in the eighteenth century was inextricable from the colonial beginnings of empire. The flinty lightness of Festa's readings cannily resembles the subtlety and style of the varied examples she deftly analyzes, from the snuffbox in Sterne's A Sentimental Journey to the perorations in Raynal's History of the Two Indies. By documenting how writers during the period ventriloquize ostensibly mute slaves as well as inanimate objects, Festa shows how sentimentalism challenged—and also extended—the reach of empire. By plumbing the complexity of eighteenth-century mercantilist and abolitionist discourses, this study breaks new ground in the scholarship about sentimentalism."—Srinivas Aravamudan, Duke University

"Thoughtful, witty, and brimming over with insight and information, Sentimental Figures of Empire offers the best explanation I know of how and why the language of sentimentalism became the preferred idiom for both vindicating and critiquing Europeans' colonial activities. Scholars of Enlightenment philosophy, of abolitionism, of the French and British novel will all benefit from—and be moved by—this rich account of sympathy's global travels during the long eighteenth century."—Deidre Shauna Lynch, Indiana University

"Thoroughly researched and densely annotated, this is a book for scholars of 18th century literature, culture, society, and ideas."—Choice

"Festa's supple prose serves her well . . . She is capable both of the judicious concession . . . and the head-on confrontation."—Deidre Lynch, Studies in English Literature

"Engaging and erudite book."—Jennifer Pitts, American Historical Review

"There is great originality in this book, and even where we find what oft was thought, it's rarely so well expressed."—Cynthia Wall, Eighteenth-Century Life

"As a comparative cultural history, Professor Festa's study offers a sound and especially persuasive argument for researching from the early modern era the emerging social relationships between the self and the objectified other in relation to empire, whether in the sentimental novel or elsewhere."—Christine Clark-Evans, Comparative Literature Studies

"Most memorable for unearthing the volatile politics of the sentimental form."—Roxann Wheeler, Scriblerian

"Festa's account of the shortcomings (and the strengths) of imperialist benevolence in the eighteenth century is unusually deft and lucid."—Carolyn Vellenga Berman, Novel

"Sentimental Figures is, put simply, a terrific book, and perhaps most especially so in the willingness of its author, Lynn Festa, to consider groundbreaking subject matter . . . in at once theoretically astute and historically nuanced ways."—Abby L. Coykendall, 1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics and Inquiries

"A beautifully written and compellingly argued book about 'the margins of the Enlightenment.'"—Cynthia Wall, Eighteenth-Century Life

"A remarkable scholarly and theoretical achievement . . . original and powerful."—Eighteenth-Century Fiction