Publisher's Synopsis
"Radical Sensibility" provides a detailed account of the interrelations of literature, ideas and history in the 18th century. This study looks at sensibility as a site of ideological conflict in the 1790s, and asks why a concept so crucial to progressive humanitarianism disappeared so suddenly in the years which followed. Chris Jones traces a continuity of ideas from Shaftesbury to Godwin and Wollstonecraft and sets it beside a conservative tradition established in the work of Hume and Adam Smith. As a guide to the transformations of "sensibility" he examines the trajectories of three writers whose work spans the decade: Charlotte Smith, Helen Maria Williams and the early Wordsworth. He offers an interpretation of Godwin's position in the history of ideas, as well as his role in Wordsworth's development as a poet. A mixture of literary textual analysis and historical and political documentation, "Radical Sensibility" is useful reading for students and teachers of poetry, ideas and the novel.
