Book

The romantic crowd : sympathy, controversy and print culture

Fairclough, Mary, 1978- author

Overview

\"In the long eighteenth century, sympathy was understood not just as an emotional bond, but also as a physiological force, through which disruption in one part of the body produces instantaneous disruption in another. Building on this theory, Romantic writers explored sympathy as a disruptive social phenomenon, which functioned to spread disorder between individuals and even across nations like a 'contagion'. It thus accounted for the instinctive behaviour of people swept up in a crowd. During this era sympathy assumed a controversial political significance, as it came to be associated with both riotous political protest and the diffusion of information through the press. Mary Fairclough reads Edmund Burke, Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin, John Thelwall, William Hazlitt and Thomas De Quincey alongside contemporary political, medical and philosophical discourse. Many of their central questions about crowd behaviour still remain to be answered by the modern discourse of collective psychology\"--Provided by publisher.

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Subject: Sympathy Great Britain History 18th century. / Sympathy Great Britain History 19th century. / Romanticism Great Britain History 18th century. / Romanticism Great Britain History 19th century. / Social values Great Britain History 18th century. / Social values Great Britain History 19th century. / Press and politics Great Britain History 19th century. / Collective behavior Moral and ethical aspects. / France History Revolution, 1789-1799 Foreign public opinion, British.
• ISBN: 1107566665, 9781107566668

Item info:

1 item available

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Holdings :

Call Number	Copies	Material	Location
BJ603.S96 F35 2015	1	BOOK	AUTOSTORE