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This article examines the recent explosion of interest in the emotions in the context of the Victorian novel. It focuses specifically on work published since the "theoretical turn" of the 1970s, describing how recent feminist critics have expanded the range of texts we examine and questioned the value we grant or refuse to sentimental literature, how Foucauldian critics have called attention to the historicity of the emotions, and how post-Althusserian critics have redefined literature as an Ideological State Apparatus. The result has been a renewed interest in -as well as a new skepticism about -emotional responses to literary texts.

Art icle navigat ion  Volume 42, Issue 2 Summer 2009  P re vio u s Art icle Ne xt Art icle  Art icle Cont ent s

This essay argues that much of the continuing appeal of the ticking time-bomb scenario has to do with the way it exploits deeply held beliefs regarding the relation between pain, sympathy, and the definition of the human that originated in the nineteenth century. These beliefs include the notion that sympathy precludes the infliction of pain; that sympathy is constitutive of humanity; and that in relation to certain kinds of subjects, pain does, in fact, elicit truth.

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