Bodily sympathy, affect, and Victorian sensation fiction

Tara Macdonald

pp. 121-137

in: Stephen Ahern (ed), Affect theory and literary critical practice, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019

Abstract

This chapter reorients historical understandings of sympathy, arguing that in the Victorian period, sympathy was understood not as merely cognitive but as an affective response that was deeply embodied. It examines depictions of bodily sympathy in Victorian scientific and philosophical writing, as well as sensation fiction, a popular genre of the 1860s. Further, MacDonald argues that the Victorian writers discussed in the chapter can be aligned with recent affect theorists, who similarly displace the centrality of cognition, as well as notions of discrete personhood. The chapter ends by exploring the relationship between affect theory and the history of emotions, arguing that both can offer fruitful approaches for examining historical understandings of emotion.