ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book develops a theory of feeling and identifies a new category of performative speech-act called 'emotives'. It applies this theory to the case of France from 1700 to 1850, with the French Revolution as the pivotal center in the narrative of emotional liberty. The book outlines the quintessential sentimental form, the tableau, and its deployment in popular theater, festivals, letters, and paintings of the Revolutionary decade. It investigates the sentimental body as the privileged site of a new revolutionary rhetoric of virtue. The book explores the way current events of the Revolution were popularly staged in dramatic reenactments throughout the 1790s. It investigates the leading icon of heroic male virtue during the Revolution: Lucius Junius Brutus, the Roman consul who sacrificed his own sons for the sake of the Republic.
