The history of tears: sensibility and sentimentality in France

Abstract

Part 1 The taste for tears, an exchange of sensibilities: crying and reading the exchange of tears and its rules on the polite code of emotion tears in the theatre tears during the revolution (1789-1794). Part 2 From modesty to aridity: towards a new sensitivity the discrete charms of suffering moral studies. Part 3 Crisis of tears - dangers of the emotions the disturbing strangeness the tears of the popular novel the social and political codes of emotion the misfortunes of the melodrama.