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Description
"[An } erudite, immensely entertaining book...Mount makes for a delightful guide" -- Literary Review
From troubadours to Twitter: a thousand years of feelings, fads, and furious sentiment, from renowned essayist Ferdinand Mount.
Whatever we think we feel, you can be sure that the past has had a part to play in it. In Soft, Ferdinand Mount tells the millennium-long history of emotion through delightful snapshots, often mischievous storytelling and a masterly command of history.
Revealing all the ways people in the past expressed their grief and joy, Mount explores the shifting importance societies have placed on empathy for the misfortunes of others. Each seismic moment, Mount argues, from the French Revolution to Civil Rights, has had a corresponding sentimental revolution that has fuelled great political turning points and come to define human civilization.
But during this long history, powerful feelings have frequently come under attack. No one wants to be accused of being sentimental; its detractors call it soppy, effeminate and populist – the stuff of soap operas and pop songs. The Reformation tried to stamp out excessive emotion, the Victorians resolutely maintained their stiff upper lips and no one loathed sentimentality more than the modernists – and yet, today, Mount argues it is not the stoics who are ruling the roost: we are living in an age of emotion.
From the Occitan poets of the 12th century to Paul McCartney' songs, and modern debates around woke, this is a witty insight into the story of emotions and the way they have swayed human history.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE: The First Sentimental Revolution
Inventing Love – Passionate about the Passion – This Vale of Tears – The Power of Soft
CHAPTER TWO: The New Stony Age
A Lament for Walsingham – The Dowsing Rod – Chilling with Michelangelo
CHAPTER THREE: The Second Sentimental Revolution
The Man Who Invented Me Too – Love Divine, All Loves Excelling – The Continental Version – The Dawn of Toleration – The
Three Scottish Sympathizers – Movers, Shakers and Quakers
CHAPTER FOUR: Manliness Rules OK
Reacting into Reaction – Women Can Be Manly, Too – The Dry Imperial Eye
CHAPTER FIVE: Mr Popular Sentiment
The Case of Charles Dickens – Uncle Tom and Aunt Phillis – Victor Hugo, Hélas!
CHAPTER SIX: The Great Estranging
The Dilemma of The Doctor – On or About December 1910 – The Revolt Against the Masses
CHAPTER SEVEN: The Third Sentimental Revolution
1963 and All That – It's a Private Matter – It's a Crime to Discriminate – Murdered for a Song – Tears on the Turf – 6 September 1997
Picture Credits and Permissions
Notes
Further Reading
Acknowledgements
Index
Product details
| Published | Nov 18 2025 |
|---|---|
| Format | Hardback |
| Edition | 1st |
| Extent | 320 |
| ISBN | 9781399421881 |
| Imprint | Bloomsbury Continuum |
| Dimensions | 9 x 6 inches |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
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