ABSTRACT

The word ‘sensibility’ had a glorious past. It is largely gone from our vocabulary today, where we use the word to mean little more than ‘emotional viewpoint’; however, during the latter half of the eighteenth century, sensibility could inspire enthusiastic encomia and designate the essential spark of life, virtue, and humanity. Both epigraphs above describe the “man of feeling” and his overriding virtue, sensibility: one is an entry in Denis Diderot’s Encyclopédie (1765), the other a soliloquy by Parson Yorick in Laurence Sterne’s novel A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy by Mr. Yorick (1768). In both cases, the authors equate the ability to feel deeply with a virtue surpassing any achieved through discipline or reason, even if (or perhaps especially if) it leads to ridicule in the eyes of the world. It designates a moral superiority defi ned in opposition to more traditional mores and societal standards of success.