Public Sentiments

“Offers many fascinating insights into nineteenth-century American literature and culture. Hendler’s readings of classic and lesser-known texts are invariably creative, sophisticated and erudite.” — Journal of the Early Republic

“Although recent books . . . have opened up aspects of the 'cultural work' of American writing, Hendler offers further and specific insight into the subject.” — CHOICE

“Public Sentiments makes a cogent, eloquent, and forceful contribution to studies of sentimentalism and culture in American literary studies.” — American Literature

“Glenn Hendler’s book is a fine contribution to the scholarship of literary sentimentalism.” — Nineteenth-Century Literature

“Sophisticated, yet lively and readable, Public Sentiments will be useful to those readers interested in how sentiment shaped public identities and institutions in nineteenth-century America; especially valuable is its emphasis on the masculine experience of affect.” — South Atlantic Review

“Public Sentiments tells what sentimentality does and theorizes why it is so central to understanding the logics of individual and cultural identification. In this full-scale account of male sentiment and the limits of female sympathy, Hendler analyzes with imagination and wit how we can gauge the nineteenth-century significance of sentimentality. It is a remarkably lucid, forceful book.” — Dale M. Bauer, University of Kentucky

“Public Sentiments is a welcome addition to debates about sentimentality and culture in American studies. Its readings are meticulous, historically grounded, and theoretically informed. Combining psychoanalytic and Habermasian approaches to displays of emotion, Glenn Hendler revises current concepts of the public appearance of the man of feeling in nineteenth-century America.” — Shirley Samuels, University of Delaware