Overview

Richly researched and engagingly written, Political Affairs of the Heart traces the emergence of female sentimental travel writing in late eighteenth-century Britain, and posits its centrality to women's engagement with national and gender politics. This study examines four travel narratives written by women between 1774 and 1795, convincingly arguing that they effectively deploy the discourse of sensibility to engage with debates around Britain's national identity during the French and American Revolutions. Van Netten Blimke contends that Laurence Sterne's A Sentimental Journey (1768)-which first introduced sentimental discourse to the travelogue-facilitated women's gradual inclusion into this previously male-dominated genre, effectively paving the way for women to influence the country's sociopolitical transformation. These four previously understudied works successfully combine eyewitness authority with the language of sensibility to mount impassioned interventions in their nation's perception and practice of revolutionary politics, at a time when its national identity was most in flux.

Full Product Details

Author:   Linda Van Netten Blimke
Publisher:   Bucknell University Press,U.S.
Imprint:   Bucknell University Press,U.S.
Dimensions:   Width: 15.60cm , Height: 2.00cm , Length: 23.50cm
Weight:   0.004kg
ISBN:  

9781684484058

ISBN 10:   1684484057
Pages:   272
Publication Date:   15 July 2022
Recommended Age:   From 18 to 99 years
Audience:   College/higher education ,  College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Tertiary & Higher Education ,  Tertiary & Higher Education
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

Introduction: Critical Contexts: Eighteenth-Century Women’s Travel Writing Part One: Mobile Feelings: Mapping the Sentimental Traveler 1 “Altogether of a Different Cast”: The Development of the Sentimental Traveler Part Two: Divided Sympathies: Female Sentimental Travel Writers and the American Revolution 2 “I Am Sure You Will Share My Feelings”: Janet Schaw’s Journal of a Lady of Quality, Imperial Desire, and the American Revolution 3 The Ties That Bind: Sentimentalizing Colonialism in A Journey to the Highlands of Scotland Part Three: Sensibility in Distress: Female Sentimental Travel Writers and the French Revolution 4 Revitalizing Sensibility: Mary Morgan’s Defense of Emotional Engagement in A Tour to Milford Haven 5 “A Renovation of Existence”: Helen Maria Williams’s A Tour in Switzerland and the Renewal of Political Vision Epilogue: “An Affair of the Heart” Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index

Reviews

"""In Van Netten Blimke’s impressively researched study, four writers from across the political spectrum use sentimental travel to intervene in debates about colonialism, war, and national or imperial identity, significantly advancing our understanding of women writers’ strategies for navigating gender constraints in a literary genre that women had just recently entered.""  -- Elizabeth Bohls * coeditor of Travel Writing 1700-1830: An Anthology * ""Van Netten Blimke reveals the many ways in which women travel writers used the language and tropes of sensibility as they explored the lessons of the world-changing events of the French and American Revolutions. Her lively study will be of interest to anyone working in the eighteenth century as it excavates the complex intellectual milieus represented in these widely underrated books."" -- Katherine Turner * editor of A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy * ""Richly researched and elegantly argued, Political Affairs of the Heart recovers the complex contemporary resonances of eighteenth-century sentimental travel writing and demonstrates emphatically how women used the form to make a variety of interventions in political and moral debate."" -- Carl Thompson * author of The Suffering Traveller and the Romantic Imagination * ""In Van Netten Blimke’s impressively researched study, four writers from across the political spectrum use sentimental travel to intervene in debates about colonialism, war, and national or imperial identity, significantly advancing our understanding of women writers’ strategies for navigating gender constraints in a literary genre that women had just recently entered.""  -- Elizabeth Bohls * coeditor of Travel Writing 1700-1830: An Anthology * ""Van Netten Blimke reveals the many ways in which women travel writers used the language and tropes of sensibility as they explored the lessons of the world-changing events of the French and American Revolutions. Her lively study will be of interest to anyone working in the eighteenth century as it excavates the complex intellectual milieus represented in these widely underrated books."" -- Katherine Turner * editor of A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy * ""Richly researched and elegantly argued, Political Affairs of the Heart recovers the complex contemporary resonances of eighteenth-century sentimental travel writing and demonstrates emphatically how women used the form to make a variety of interventions in political and moral debate."" -- Carl Thompson * author of The Suffering Traveller and the Romantic Imagination * “In Political Affairs of the Heart, Van Netten Blimke insightfully analyzes the discursive challenges in women’s travel writing.” * Eighteenth-Century Fiction * “Blimke’s writing is lively, the travelogues are intriguing, the rhetorical and historical interpretations are well-grounded in period and contemporary literatures, and the arguments for the political import of not only each woman’s individual writing but their impact within their times and communities are thought-provoking.” * Women & Language *"

In Van Netten Blimke's impressively researched study, four writers from across the political spectrum use sentimental travel to intervene in debates about colonialism, war, and national or imperial identity, significantly advancing our understanding of women writers' strategies for navigating gender constraints in a literary genre that women had just recently entered. --Elizabeth Bohls coeditor of Travel Writing 1700-1830: An Anthology Van Netten Blimke reveals the many ways in which women travel writers used the language and tropes of sensibility as they explored the lessons of the world-changing events of the French and American Revolutions. Her lively study will be of interest to anyone working in the eighteenth century as it excavates the complex intellectual milieus represented in these widely under-rated books. --Katherine Turner editor of A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy Richly researched and elegantly argued, Political Affairs of the Heart recovers the complex contemporary resonances of eighteenth-century sentimental travel writing and demonstrates emphatically how women used the form to make a variety of interventions in political and moral debate. --Carl Thompson author of The Suffering Traveller and the Romantic Imagination

"""Richly researched and elegantly argued, Political Affairs of the Heart recovers the complex contemporary resonances of eighteenth-century sentimental travel writing and demonstrates emphatically how women used the form to make a variety of interventions in political and moral debate.""— Carl Thompson, author of The Suffering Traveller and the Romantic Imagination ""Van Netten Blimke reveals the many ways in which women travel writers used the language and tropes of sensibility as they explored the lessons of the world-changing events of the French and American Revolutions. Her lively study will be of interest to anyone working in the eighteenth century as it excavates the complex intellectual milieus represented in these widely underrated books.""— Katherine Turner, editor of A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy ""In Van Netten Blimke’s impressively researched study, four writers from across the political spectrum use sentimental travel to intervene in debates about colonialism, war, and national or imperial identity, significantly advancing our understanding of women writers’ strategies for navigating gender constraints in a literary genre that women had just recently entered."" — Elizabeth Bohls, coeditor of Travel Writing 1700-1830: An Anthology"

Author Information

LINDA VAN NETTEN BLIMKE is an associate professor of English at Concordia University of Edmonton in Alberta, Canada, where she teaches eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature. She is the coeditor of Crossing Canada, 1907: Hope Hook’s Diary.  

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