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Tompkins' Sensational Designs INTRO, Annotated
Tompkins' Sensational Designs INTRO, Annotated
NOTE:
I have defined a few terms and concepts at the end of this
document.
The books Table of Contents is also at the end of this
document.
The original page numbers are included at the TOP of each
section.
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[.]
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Thus, the novels literary style, no less than its characters and
plot, will seem forceful and expressive to the degree that it adopts
on idiom to which a contemporary audience can respond. When
little Eva says to Topsy, O, Topsy, poor child, I love youwith a
sudden burst of feeling, and laying her little thin, white hand on
Topsys shoulder; I love you because you havent any father, or
mother, or friends:--because youve been a poor, abused child! I
love you, and I want you to be good, her style may seem
saccharine or merely pathetic to us. But her language had power
to move hundreds of thousands of readers in the nineteenth
century because they believed in the elevation of a simple
childlike idiom, in the spiritual efficacy of sudden burst[s] of
feeling, and in the efficacy of what is spiritual in general. And so
when Eva ends her speech [with] its only a little while I shall be
with you, the comparison evoked between the doll-like Eva and
the son of God does not seem absurd or contrived to Stowes
readersit isaffirming the potential of every personto live as
Christ did. Within the context of evangelical Christianity, one
might say of Stowe what R. P. Blackmur said of Melvillethat she
habitually used words greatly.
xix
The word academy in the general sense means all the people
whose lives are given to scholarshipthat is, academics. The
academy includes scientific researchers and historians and
literary critics and psychologists and botanists and people who
study tse tse flies. Most academics both teach college and publish
books and articles about their own research. JT is of course an
English teacher and a writer about literary study.
Domestic here means that the story is about home life and
ordinary thingslike Little Women or Pride and Prejudice. It tends
to focus on ordinary human concernsmarriage, death, illness,
etc.
Table of Contents: