The history of tears : sensibility and sentimentality in France
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The history of tears : sensibility and sentimentality in France
Macmillan, 1991
- : pbk
- Other Title
-
Histoire des larmes XVIIIe-XIXe siècles
Available at 8 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
Bibliography: p. 266-275
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
"In which societies," Roland Barthes asked, "and at which times, have we cried? Since when have men (and not women) ceased to cry? Why, at a certain moment, did sensibility sink into sentimentality?" These are just some of the questions which Anne Vincent-Buffault sets out to answer. Concentrating on 18th and 19th century France, she traces the curious evolution of the function of tears, from the public effusions of the 18th century through the more introspective sobbing of the Romantic period and on to the Victorian era's relegation of tears to the status of a feminine, and therefore reprehensible, weakness. Dr Vincent-Buffault draws on a wealth of sources: novels, diaries and letters, theatre reviews, medical reports and books of etiquette. The picture which emerges is a subtle and often paradoxical one. Intensely private and yet highly demonstrative, seemingly spontaneous and yet - as this study shows - historically determined, tears function as a complex and highly variable "discourse". And the changes in their meaning have mirrored key movements in society: changes in the role of privacy and emotion, changes in the place of women.
Table of Contents
- Part 1 The taste for tears, an exchange of sensibilities: crying and reading
- the exchange of tears and its rules
- on the polite code of emotion
- tears in the theatre
- tears during the revolution (1789-1794). Part 2 From modesty to aridity: towards a new sensitivity
- the discrete charms of suffering
- moral studies. Part 3 Crisis of tears - dangers of the emotions
- the disturbing strangeness
- the tears of the popular novel
- the social and political codes of emotion
- the misfortunes of the melodrama.
by "Nielsen BookData"