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" The sympathy of popular opinion : "
Fairclough, Mary
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Latin Dissertation
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| Record Number
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1096719
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TLets479507
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| Main Entry
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Fairclough, Mary
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| Title & Author
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The sympathy of popular opinion :\ Fairclough, Mary
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| College
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University of York
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| Date
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2008
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| student score
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2008
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| Degree
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Ph.D.
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| Abstract
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This thesis explores representations of crowd behaviour in prose writing of the lateeighteenth and early nineteenth century in Britain. I argue that accounts of the crowdfrom a broad range of contexts, genres and political prejudices are united by a commonintuition that the peculiar qualities of collective behaviour are provoked by sympathy.Sympathy is a ubiquitous term in eighteenth-century studies, but recent accounts of itspolitical application tend to make it an index of mutual approbation and socialcohesion. I argue instead that sympathy is a mode of transmission, a medium for theunregulated political energies that make democratic politics a profound worry forcommentatorso f all political persuasionsd uring this period.The model of sympathy on which this study draws is a physiological rather thana moral or emotional one. Sympathyh ad long been associatedw ith quack medicine,b utduring this period it becomes a legitimate medical term for the process through whichdisorder in one organ of the body is instantaneously transmitted to another distantorgan, or throughout the whole body. Though the cause of this phenomenon is oftenattributed to the nerves, physiological sympathy retains its occult overtones, and isnever granted categorical explanation.My work demonstrates how this model of sympathy is applied to the behaviourof crowds in the philosophical, political, literary and periodical prose of the period,reaching greatest intensity at periods of social and political unrest. I argue that the threatof the crowd catalysed by sympathy produces surprising continuities between writers ofcontrasting political views. While reactionary commentators find it easy to denouncethe mob, reformers are often forced to agree that that sympathetic communicationmakes the crowd ultimately resistant to control. But writers of all political persuasionsalso attempt to find a positive application for the language of collective sympathy, withvarying degrees of success.In this thesis I argue the need to reconsider the understanding and applicationsof sympathy during the long eighteenth century, to give full consideration to itsdynamic social and political function. In addition, I assert the significance of accountslike these to the ongoing analysis of `crowd psychology'. Eighteenth-centurydescriptions of the crowd in terms of sympathy resonate strongly with contemporaryaccounts of collective behaviour, demonstrating the extent to which questions raised bycommentators at this period still remain to be answered.In chapter one I discuss various investigations of physiological sympathy in eighteenthcenturymedical writings, and show how sympathy becomes connected in popularmedical texts with electrical and quasi-electrical phenomena, including animalmagnetism. I show how these phenomena were explicitly associated with mobbehaviour in accounts of the Wilkesite agitations of 1768-1770.Chapter two addresses the representation of revolutionary crowds in thewritings of Edmund Burke, Helen Maria Williams, Mary Wollstonecraft, WilliamGodwin and John Thelwall during the 1790s. I argue that though Burke is forced torevise his conception of sympathy as an emotional force of social cohesion in the wakeof the revolution, he is less troubled than his antagonists, for whom sympathetictransmission disrupts any appeal to rational enlightenment. Only Thelwall, I argueoffers a solution to this iirp sse by embracing the physical basis of sympatheticconnection.Chaptert hree examinesr epresentationso f collective behaviouri n the periodicalpress during the years 1816-1819. I show how a vibrant cheap radical press and aconcertedc ampaigno f massp olitical protest transformed understandingsth e influenceof sympathyo n collective political behaviour.W hile the `respectablep' ress,r eformist aswell as conservative, represents the crowd as unruly rabble, cheap radical publicationsunsettle this judgement by articulating voices from within the crowd. Despite theircommitment to the diffusion of knowledge, these journalists exploit the crossoverbetween the spread of reason and the sympathetic diffusion of physical and emotionalenergies.In chapter four I address two attempts to reclaim the language of sympathy forcohesive, even loyalist political ends. Dugald Stewart's analysis of `sympatheticimitation' makes sympathy the primary stimulus for collective action but refuses todraw the usual reactionary conclusions. A more profound break with condemnations ofcollective sympathy comes in the work of Robert Southey, David Wilkie, WilliamHazlitt and Thomas De Quincey, who all present sympathy as a patriotic force, byassociatingit with national systemso f communication such as the mail. However, in thewake of further developments in communication, this positive appropriation ofsympathy is necessarily short-lived
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DA Great Britain
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PR English literature
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| Added Entry
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University of York
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