Synopses & Reviews
In the middle of the eighteenth century, something new made itself felt in European cultureand#8212;a tone or style that came to be called the sentimental. The sentimental mode went on to shape not just literature, art, music, and cinema, but peopleand#8217;s very structures of feeling, their ways of doing and being.and#160;In what is sure to become a critical classic, An Archaeology of Sympathy challenges Sergei Eisensteinand#8217;s influential account of Dickens and early American film by tracing the unexpected history and intricate strategies of the sentimental mode and showing how it has been reimagined over the past three centuries. James Chandler begins with a look at Frank Capra and the Capraesque in American public life, then digs back to the eighteenth century to examine the sentimental substratum underlying Dickens and early cinema alike. With this surprising move, he reveals how literary spectatorship in the eighteenth century anticipated classic Hollywood films such as Capraand#8217;s It Happened One Night, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, and Itand#8217;s a Wonderful Life. Chandler then moves forward to romanticism and modernismand#8212;two cultural movements often seen as defined by their rejection of the sentimentaland#8212;examining how authors like Mary Shelley, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf actually engaged with sentimental forms and themes in ways that left a mark on their work.and#160;Reaching from Laurence Sterne to the Coen brothers, An Archaeology of Sympathy casts new light on the long eighteenth century and the novelistic forebears of cinema and our modern world.
Review
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An Archaeology of Sympathy is cultural history of the first order. It unfolds thrillingly, as a kind of project of media archaeology, showing us in eye-opening ways the crucial roles that the sentimental mode accords to notions of virtual spectatorship and mediated feeling. I found myself fascinated by the historical argument about sentimentalismandrsquo;s relation to episodes of media shift. This book has changed the way I think about books and movies.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;James Chandlerandrsquo;s An Archaeology of Sympathy demonstrates in spades the continuing value of an attitude or disposition to cultural production that often goes by the name of close reading. In a dazzling display of erudition, razor sharp argumentation, and the sheer enjoyment of reading, looking, and thinking well, Chandler moves with both ease and friction across the films of Frank Capra, the poetry of William Wordsworth, and the philosophy of Adam Smith.and#160;Each of these cultural products and all of the other works both recent and historical that are drawn into Chandlerandrsquo;s sentimental disposition take on new and surprising guises.and#160;Read this book: the archaeology of sympathy may not change your life but you'll never watch a film or read a work of literature again without hearing as you do so andlsquo;In a Sentimental Mood.andrsquo;andrdquo;
Review
and#160;and#8220;This learned, fluent, subtle, and surprising book brings together an old/new moment in European thought and a new/old moment in American cinema, showing how and#8216;sentimentalityand#8217; may include not only messy or displaced feelings but also a whole modern structure of relationships based on who is looking at (or caring about or troubled by) whom. Few writers have connected film and print in such a persuasive fashion, and none, as far as I know, has made, for example, Lord Shaftesbury, Lawrence Sterne, Adam Smith, Charles Dickens, Frank Capra, and Joseph Conrad look as if they might belong in the same room.and#8221;
Synopsis
Biologists, historians, lawyers, art historians, and literary critics all voice arguments in the critical dialogue about what constitutes evidence in research and scholarship. They examine not only the constitution and "blurring" of disciplinary boundaries, but also the configuration of the fact-evidence distinctions made in different disciplines and historical moments; the relative function of such concepts as "self-evidence," "experience," "test," "testimony," and "textuality" in varied academic discourses; and the way "rules of evidence" are themselves products of historical developments.
The essays and rejoinders are by Terry Castle, Lorraine Daston, Carlo Ginzburg, Ian Hacking, Mark Kelman, R. C. Lewontin, Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Mary Poovey, Donald Preziosi, Simon Schaffer, Joan W. Scott, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and Barbara Herrnstein Smith.
The critical responses are by Lauren Berlant, James Chandler, Jean Comaroff, Arnold I. Davidson, Harry D. harootunian, Elizabeth Helsinger, Thomas C. Holt, Francoise Meltzer, Robert J. Richards, Lawrence Rothfield, Joel Snyder, Cass R. Sunstein, and William Wimsatt.
About the Author
James Chandler is the Barbara E. and Richard J. Franke Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature and chair of the Department of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago. He is the author of several books, including England in 1819: The Politics of Literary Culture and the Case of Romantic Historicism, also published by the University of Chicago Press.
Table of Contents
Introduction
The Subject of Evidence
Contagious Folly: An Adventure and Its Skeptics by Terry Castle
For Your Eyes Only: Ghost Citing by Françoise Meltzer
A Rejoinder to Françoise Meltzer by Terry Castle
Self Evidence by Simon Schaffer
Massaging the Evidence by Lawrence Rothfield
Gestures in Question by Simon Schaffer
Jane Austen and the Masturbating Girl by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Evidences of Masturbation by Lauren Berlant
Against Epistemology by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Objects and Objectivities
Belief and Resistance: A Symmetrical Account by Barbar Herrnstein Smith
Resistance to Constructed Belief by Robert Richards
Circling Around, Knocking Over, Playing Out by Barbara Herrnstein Smith
Reasonable Evidence of Reasonableness by Mark Kelman
On Finding Facts by Cass R. Sunstein
A Rejoinder to Cass R. Sunstein by Mark Kelman
The Question of Art History by Donald Preziosi
A Response to Donald Preziosi by Joel Snyder
A Rejoinder to Joel Snyder by Donald Preziosi
History and the Uses of Inquiry
Marvelous Facts and Miraculous Evidence in Early Modern Europe by Lorraine Daston
Proving a History of Evidence by James Chandler
Historical Epistemology by Lorraine Daston
Checking the Evidence: The Judge and the Historian by Carlo Ginzburg
Carlo Ginzburg and the Renewal of Historiography by Arnold I. Davidson
A Rejoinder to Arnold I. Davidson by Carlo Ginzburg
Atlantis and the Nations by Pierre Vidal-Naquet
Using and Abusing Fiction by Elizabeth Helsinger
How to Get beyond Myth? by Pierre Vidal-Naquet
Experience and the Disciplines of Proof
The Evidence of Experience by Joan W. Scott
Experience and the Politics of Intellectual Inquiry by Thomas C. Holt
Figures of Arithmetic, Figures of Speech: The Discourse of Statistics by Mary Poovey
A Response to Mary Poovey by Harry Harootunian
Grand Narrative or Historical Overdetermination? by Mary Poovey
Two Souls in One Body by Ian Hacking
Aristotle Re-membered by Jean Comaroff
Aristotle Meets Incest—and Innocence by Ian Hacking
Facts and the Factitious in Natural Sciences by R. C. Lewontin
Lewontin's Evidence (That There Isn't Any) by William Wimsatt
A Rejoinder to William Wimsatt by R. C. Lewontin
Index