Sense and Morbid Sensibility: Pathological Feeling in Romantic Science and Literature

As the recent upsurge in histories of the emotions have underlined, we have always had a love-hate relationship with feelings. On the one hand, feelings ground us and give density to experience. On the other hand, we might feel overwhelmed and displaced by emotion.

This talk from Dr Chris Bundock (Department of Literature, Film and Theatre Studies) focuses on the shape that conflict takes specifically in the eighteenth century, where “passions,” “sensibility,” and “sympathy" are subjected to new forms of medical-scientific thought. What happens, in other words, when pathological feeling is cast not in terms of humours or spirits but, specifically, nerves? When the nervous system becomes the predominant language for reading embodied emotion, what effect does this have on the experience and the expression of emotion?

The paper explores such changes as they emerge in the dialogue between Romantic literature and Enlightenment medical science. Drawing from the Conclusion of a larger book manuscript, this talk will provide an overview of the general argument before pivoting to some of the continuing effects of literary and cultural history in the contemporary moment.

This meeting of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Literary Studies is presented as hybrid event, taking place on campus and on Zoom. Join the Zoom meeting here.