In her “Sensibility and the American Revolution” published in 2009, Sarah Knott’s study on sensibility of the second half o18th CE addresses a refreshing mode of cultural history and material history through the changing of human minds when they provided framework for transition from society to a new state. The raw material Knott uses is history of two major characters: booksellers and medical physicians who were both contemporary elite class conducting social activities around a set of transatlantic and American circle of Philadelphia, Oxford, London and Bloomington. As the mainstream ideology in late 18th CE and defined as human sensitivity of perception which formed bases of link of self and society, sensibility dominated in the Revolution as a “social impulse” of rebel to monarchical oppression of colonial subjects to reconstruct the independent American society. Sensibility is operated as a soft power but restricted in such context by extending its effect on military and politics. (18-19) Knott put great efforts formulating what sensibility was, sometimes creates ambiguity for me. In her words, sensibility is moral authority (3), a distinctive mode of self (5), social interaction via sensation of sympathy and fellow feeling conveying both physiological and psychological quality (5). In other words, it’s complete awareness of self physically and psychologically the relationships to the society. It seems that by such claims, Knott validates her inclusion of booksellers or publishers as the physiological agent, medical physician the physical impulse. However, according to Knott’s research, though sensibility emerged from the elite circles, it generously included class and gender issues to yield more respects to the oppressed and minority. (143-145) Friendships, as “chain of sympathetic regards” (135) had been established between different classes and thus social order was reconstructed. Friendship even became “business of life” (122) and similarity of sentiment served as the foundation and suitableness of disposition. (123) Knott also includes religion as a means giving birth to sensibility as resistance to previous religion was a strong motivation to a new state appeal for the North America.
I appreciate Knott’s balance her writing with both voices of sense and sensibility. It makes the accounts of politicizing of sensibility an unusual mild tone. Such specific characteristics came from the particular population of late 18th American colonies: most of the people had a same mindset of moral virtues based on strong religious reflection. Basically, these were people of high similarity therefore it was easier for them to craft an ideal independent state of common preference. Knott points out a window for us to view the power of changing human history from the glasses of humanity and hidden inner. The un-surfaced agent of sensibility probably not inadequately reveals the silent past but drives our attention to the study of human motivation in historical events. By mastering kinds of sources like Bloch and Thompson, Knott approaches history centered of society however with less touches on class and gender as Scott and Morgan. Is she doing a bottom-up history? Not exactly, because the sales of sensibility were almost men of power and higher class.
Monday, December 7, 2009
Sensibility and the Mind of the Early Republic
This week’s reading, Sensibility and the American Revolution, was a refreshing change for me from the usual approach to the revolutionary period. Typically—and especially with popular history—revolutionary history focuses on great men, politics, or military matters. Sara Knott, to the contrary, focuses on the inner life. Specifically, she discusses sensibility, which she defines broadly in the Introduction: “[s]ensibility was human sensitivity of perception and thus comprised the fundamental link of self and society” (1). Sensibility, then, is about the basic relationship between people and their society, which explains why she refers to the concept in the next sentence as a basis for action (1). 18th century people tied their conceptions of sensibility to the move to create new societies in light of their changing world (1). Therefore, those conceptions were important to a colonial population who had just broken away from Britain and wanted to build a new nation.
After her explanation in the Introduction, Knott spends the rest of the book describing the rise and fall of sensibility. Chapter one is about booksellers, whom she refers to as a transatlantic conduit of sensibility (27). Later in chapter three, she discusses an “Americanization of sensibility” as the concept took root in the colonies (105). Her example of this development is sentimental coteries, which involved a new conception of friendship and, therefore, social connection (113). In chapter five, she delves into the connections between sensibility and the development of the new republic (195). Finally in chapter six, there is the fall of sensibility as it became controversial: “. . . across the 1790s, sensibility became a subject of sustained and deliberative abuse” (265).
I must admit, as much as I admire Knott’s approach, it became somewhat difficult to follow in the end. I realized after finishing her book that my difficulties come from the way she put the last chapter together. She seems only to focus on a few individuals in chapter six, and I lost track of their relationship to sensibility. By the time I was in the middle of that chapter, I was telling myself that I had heard enough of William Cobbitt, late 19th century theater in Philadelphia, and Benjamin Rush. Normally, I am a big fan of histories that incorporate literary analysis or discussions of out-of-date science, as Knott did about medical science, but this time I lost patience.
On a positive note, I want to praise Knott’s attempt to understand the inner life of people in the revolutionary period. Understanding the minds of people in the past, I think, has been a theme in the last few books we have read. As budding historians in this class, we should pay attention to this. Perhaps what makes Knott different from those other books is that she is writing about a group of people who feel much closer to us than the Maya do. Her book reminds me that, just because the revolutionary generation feels close, it does not mean that we know their minds. It is easy, after watching so many films and getting exposure to the “founding fathers” in school, to have a false sense of familiarity.
Another thing I liked about Knott’s book is how she treated the Atlantic Ocean as a bridge between Europeans and North Americans. Throughout the book, there is a sense of a strong European—mainly British—influence on the early United States. That is refreshing to read after growing up with teachers who told me that the Atlantic Ocean was like a wall that allowed the United States to be safe. Knott points out that there had always been people moving back and forth between Europe and the United States, and they borrowed from and spread ideas in both sides of the Atlantic. What I would like to read now is a history that incorporates more parts of the Atlantic world. I want to learn more about how Africans, South Americans, and even Asians influenced the early North American mind. I think we have already touched on the African influence in this class with Laboring Women.
Sensibility and the American Revolution
In her book Sensibility and the American Revolution, British-born historian Sarah Knott provides a cultural history of the American revolution, stating that the “history of the American Revolution is in part a history of sensibility” (p. 4). Defining sensibility as a “mode of self” or the “moral refinement of those in the know,” Knott shows how the American Revolution was a collective, cultural movement which was the result of people becoming more sensitive to their environment. Knott argues that the “sentimental project” better explains the flourishing of sensibility during this period, making it her goal to show that the people of this period who contributed to this sensibility project, saw the state and society as two separate entities, and dreamed of a social revolution that involved self awareness and society working together (p. 3).
According to Knott, the people who practiced sensibility utilized it as a “shared way to make meaning and impose order on the world” (p. 323). Sensibility was seen in print, medicine and the resulting social circles. In medicine, as new medical schools emerged in Philadelphia and other North American cities, the nervous model of the body was at the center of academic instruction. Understood, was the sensibility of body parts and the need to “maintain balance, internally and externally, keeping the body’s nervous ‘sensible’ state in healthful equipoise and easy reactivity” (p. 72). As much as this became consensus knowledge inside the academic institutions, there was also a need and obligation to teach it to the lay pubic through public lectures and popular print. Knott argues that this culturally recognized individual sense of health “required greater self-sufficiency” and this cultural belief would facilitate acts of resistance during this period. This sensibility also was experienced and practiced in groups of friends or those with common thoughts/interests. For even the simple social circles of this period, that discussed literature and human nature, these circles aided the sentimental project which was different than earlier artifacts of conversation (p. 119). These social coteries, prove a “spectatorial sense of self in society” and the “recognition of certain types of in certain situations: the sentimental traveler, the companionate spouse, virtue in distress, the sympathetic friend” (p. 112).
Knott argues that history of the late eighteenth century that is neither top down nor bottom up. Specifically, she focuses on what the drove the change that led to the events of the American Revolution. Knott narrows her research to Philadelphia, which she refers to as “a key site for the efflorescence of sensibility” due to it being the one North American city that was very welcome to various demographics, its respected print culture, and being a top port for international trade (p. 15). But does she do what she intended to do? She attempts to show a collective, cultural change that led to the period’s major political events. But in doing so, does her approach really differ from previous “bottom up” histories? How is this different from Thompson giving agency to individuals in the emergence of a collective class consciousness? She argues against previous approaches of limiting agency to a few, but does inclusion of culture and social circles differ much from Bloch who saw feudalism as not being limited to just the nobility? Did Bloch not also understand the social relationships and cultural changes that were happening?
Knott's Sensibility and the American Revolution
The introduction of Sarah Knott’s Sensibility and the American Revolution outlines multiple goals for the book. Knott first writes that the revolution was a time to remake society and to allow the “sensible” self to be an agent of social change. She states that “to understand this peculiar determination, which was most fully expressed around the time the federal Constitution was written and debated—what I am calling, for want of a better phrase, the “sentimental project”—and to explain the extraordinary efflorescence of sensibility during the revolutionary period are the goals of this book” (2). Knott writes that “the agenda of this book is in the second half of the eighteenth century and the social impulses of the American Revolution” (15). In the next part of the introduction she says that her book seeks “to explain something quite precise: why particular people appealed to sensibility at a particular time and for a particular set of purposes, why sensibility came intensely to seem both self-evident and important at the Constitutional moment” (20).
Knott goes on to break her book into three parts. The first part, Transatlantic Conduits, argues that “medicine and print were at once crucial transatlantic conduits of sensibility and grounds for the growing politicization of the “nervous” and the “sentimental” in the imperial crisis” (25). The second part, American Circles, argues that the Americanization of sensibility can be understood in two ways: “entailed in the local development of sentimental coteries, the fashioning of selves and relationships among intimates and along sensible lines” and “the turning of sensibility to overtly American…ends in the political and cultural wars of independence” (105). The third part, Transatlantic Backlash, holds argues that “the sentimental project was one of American social union in a brave new world, but it could not transcend the wider turbulence of liberation and cataclysm” (267). Throughout these three parts she incorporates the themes which she pointed out in the introduction—Atlantic influences, class, and the military and state.
Interestingly enough Knott also explains the terms history from the “top down” and “bottom up,” and believes that these terms “are more muted than revolution” therefore finding both terms inadequate for her project. (2). This is an issue that we have discussed with the majority of the books, and often I had wished that there were ways of describing works that use both methods, or use mostly one but draw in elements of the other when necessary. I appreciate that a historian is addressing these issues in her work.
I initially had difficulty in getting into the meat of the book because of my confusion about what sensibility actually is. In her introduction, Knott explains how philosophers, physiologists, novelists, etc. understood sensibility; Knott herself says that “this book treats sensibility as a distinctive mode of self” (5). Although she seems to outlines her intent in each section of the book for the reader (which I did appreciate), I still felt lost. She incorporates a number of areas into her work (which go along with her argument that sensibility influenced people and society and everything that entails), but this left me feeling a bit overwhelmed. Knott concludes by saying that her book argues “that sensibility is one historicized approach to the question of self, one way of being that mattered to contemporaries…Sensibility offered an understanding—indeed an ordinary practice—of personal psychology that told of the utter malleability of personhood with the outer world, opening out new relations between the self, society, and the state” (325). I like the argument of interdisciplinary impacts, but am still not sure if I fully understand the project.
Knott's Sensibility
Sarah Knott’s Sensibility in the American Revolution is an attempt to discuss the social aspects of the American Revolution through the evolving ideas of sensibility and sentimentalism. Throughout the book, there is a lack of a hard and consistent definition of sensibility. Knott even acknowledges the ambiguity of sensibility. (p.50) Knott’s work is clearly the most modern book we have read, and I feel she reflects the new directions in which the field is headed.
To begin with, Knott does not necessarily agree with either pure bottom-up or top-down approaches to history. (p.2) In her work she focuses on both the middle class and the elites. (This approach sometimes reminded me of E.P. Thompson, but in reverse.) Knott looks at how the American colonies developed their ideas of sensibility and sentimentalism through print and medical technologies, as well as the interactions of the American colonies with the British and French movements. Deciding to look at the American Revolution in such a manor is a different approach than previous historians. Knott does not focus exclusively on the military history, class warfare or the gendering of the American Revolution. Instead she looks at how the Americans interacted with their overseas counterparts and how this influenced their decisions. This presents a broader and more complex history and looks at the realities of how people make their decisions. While gender and class are ever-present issues, so are outside social and cultural influences. Analyzing the way in which 3 societies both knowingly and unknowingly worked together contributes to a fuller understanding of history.
While I appreciate Knott’s attempts at a new kind of history, I often felt lost and frustrated while reading her book. There were many times I felt she used far too many words, and word that were unnecessarily large and ambiguous. There seemed to be an undertone of theory to her writing too, which seems to always make the reading and comprehension a bit more difficult. Her book definitely appeals to a scholarly audience, though I feel even many in academia would find themselves rereading sentences in an attempt to grasp Knott’s meaning. There is also the issue of a lack of definition for Sensibility. While I understand there is ambiguity, I feel Knott could have worked harder to give the basic definition, and showed how that definition changed over time. While ambiguity exists in history and can be useful in its research and study, I feel it is the historian’s job to effectively deal with the ambiguity and take out as much as possible. With the term “sensibility” used in the title of the book, I feel Knott does herself a disservice by not attempting such a definition.
To begin with, Knott does not necessarily agree with either pure bottom-up or top-down approaches to history. (p.2) In her work she focuses on both the middle class and the elites. (This approach sometimes reminded me of E.P. Thompson, but in reverse.) Knott looks at how the American colonies developed their ideas of sensibility and sentimentalism through print and medical technologies, as well as the interactions of the American colonies with the British and French movements. Deciding to look at the American Revolution in such a manor is a different approach than previous historians. Knott does not focus exclusively on the military history, class warfare or the gendering of the American Revolution. Instead she looks at how the Americans interacted with their overseas counterparts and how this influenced their decisions. This presents a broader and more complex history and looks at the realities of how people make their decisions. While gender and class are ever-present issues, so are outside social and cultural influences. Analyzing the way in which 3 societies both knowingly and unknowingly worked together contributes to a fuller understanding of history.
While I appreciate Knott’s attempts at a new kind of history, I often felt lost and frustrated while reading her book. There were many times I felt she used far too many words, and word that were unnecessarily large and ambiguous. There seemed to be an undertone of theory to her writing too, which seems to always make the reading and comprehension a bit more difficult. Her book definitely appeals to a scholarly audience, though I feel even many in academia would find themselves rereading sentences in an attempt to grasp Knott’s meaning. There is also the issue of a lack of definition for Sensibility. While I understand there is ambiguity, I feel Knott could have worked harder to give the basic definition, and showed how that definition changed over time. While ambiguity exists in history and can be useful in its research and study, I feel it is the historian’s job to effectively deal with the ambiguity and take out as much as possible. With the term “sensibility” used in the title of the book, I feel Knott does herself a disservice by not attempting such a definition.
Knott
Sarah Knott’s Sensibility and the American Revolution was published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture in Williamsburg, Virginia by the University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill. It carries a copyright date of 2009. In this book, Knott explores the extent to which “sensibility” impacted the culture of the budding United States of America. In her introduction, she explores the many definitions of sensibility before settling on her own: “this book treats sensibility as a distinctive mode of self” (p.5). She says that, “to explore the ways in which “the ‘sensible’ self was open to personal change and an agent of social reform” is the crux of the book. Knott further elaborates:
Knott uses these sources tell a three part story. First, she gives a summary of sensibility in “American culture” (and the influence of transatlantic culture on this impulse). She examines the literary works mentioned above and the ways in which early Americans (still colonists at the time) were influenced by these works as evident in their taking cognomens based on the sensible works of the time. In this same section, she examines the ways that this idea of the “self” influenced medicine, outlined the ideas of the time that stated that the moral or sensible self was directly influenced by the physical self. In the second part of the book, she looks specifically at the American Revolution and the ways sensibility came to pervade even Washington’s Army. She further examines the presence (and lack) of “sensible” language in the founding documents, particularly the Constitution, and in the debate over the documents as evident in the Federalist papers. The final part of the book was dedicated to examining responses to sensibility following the French Revolution. As she demonstrated, sensibility did decline after the French Revolution. However, she notes that, “at the same time, what remains most striking, in the midst of this backlash, is not so much sensibility’s decline as its defense and spread, not so much its collapse as its contestation and renewed exploration. From black leaders to immigrant actresses to embattled physicians, people still groped toward what sensibility offered as a means of uniting, through social bonds rooted in susceptible selves, some of the different circles of community in a new nation and of finessing or challenging the claim to social inclusion.” (322)
My views on this book are, at the moment, a bit mixed. The title, I think, might be seen as a bit misleading. What I expected as a closer look at the details of the American Revolution and the founding of the United States through this frame of “sensibility.” What I got, instead, was 1/3 background information, 1/3 a discussion of the Revolution and founding through the lense of sensibility and 1/3 a look at the demise (or continuation?) of sensibility. It seemed to me that she did not fully weave together the topics of “sensibility” and “the American Revolution” into a full, cogent narrative or storyline. It was difficult for me to follow her from beginning to end. Likewise, her discussions of peripheral topics (that is, topics that were central to the discussion but that were not the central point, if that makes sense) were not treated fully. She points out that the rise of the “middling class” as a political power really begins during this period, but from my perspective she did not successfully integrate this discussion into main body of her argument. At points in the book she alludes to slaves, lower classes and other groups entering the discussion of sensibility and framing their own arguments in a likewise fashion, but to me, she did not fully flesh these topics out.
“The agenda of this book is the second half of the 18th century and the social impulses of the American revolution. Why did certain Americans reach forTo answer these questions, Knott employs a variety of mostly primary sources. She examines literary works, including poetry and novels which she believes illustrates the pervasiveness (or “efflorescence” as she repeatedly states) of sensibility. She also examines a variety of letters and diary entries to demonstrate the ways in which people interacted with the ideas and ideals of “sensibility.” She further examines lectures on medicine, writings of scholars (especially doctors), newspaper clippings, advertisements (such as those for runaway wives) and other sources such as the Federalist papers.
sensibility to reform individuals and society? What were the preconditions to
the sentimental project articulated at the same time as discussion of the Constitution: the expectations about how society operates, the appeal and everyday workings of sensible selfhood, the experience of this way of inhabiting he world. What made the fond expectation of social revolution seem more feasible?” (p.15)
Knott uses these sources tell a three part story. First, she gives a summary of sensibility in “American culture” (and the influence of transatlantic culture on this impulse). She examines the literary works mentioned above and the ways in which early Americans (still colonists at the time) were influenced by these works as evident in their taking cognomens based on the sensible works of the time. In this same section, she examines the ways that this idea of the “self” influenced medicine, outlined the ideas of the time that stated that the moral or sensible self was directly influenced by the physical self. In the second part of the book, she looks specifically at the American Revolution and the ways sensibility came to pervade even Washington’s Army. She further examines the presence (and lack) of “sensible” language in the founding documents, particularly the Constitution, and in the debate over the documents as evident in the Federalist papers. The final part of the book was dedicated to examining responses to sensibility following the French Revolution. As she demonstrated, sensibility did decline after the French Revolution. However, she notes that, “at the same time, what remains most striking, in the midst of this backlash, is not so much sensibility’s decline as its defense and spread, not so much its collapse as its contestation and renewed exploration. From black leaders to immigrant actresses to embattled physicians, people still groped toward what sensibility offered as a means of uniting, through social bonds rooted in susceptible selves, some of the different circles of community in a new nation and of finessing or challenging the claim to social inclusion.” (322)
My views on this book are, at the moment, a bit mixed. The title, I think, might be seen as a bit misleading. What I expected as a closer look at the details of the American Revolution and the founding of the United States through this frame of “sensibility.” What I got, instead, was 1/3 background information, 1/3 a discussion of the Revolution and founding through the lense of sensibility and 1/3 a look at the demise (or continuation?) of sensibility. It seemed to me that she did not fully weave together the topics of “sensibility” and “the American Revolution” into a full, cogent narrative or storyline. It was difficult for me to follow her from beginning to end. Likewise, her discussions of peripheral topics (that is, topics that were central to the discussion but that were not the central point, if that makes sense) were not treated fully. She points out that the rise of the “middling class” as a political power really begins during this period, but from my perspective she did not successfully integrate this discussion into main body of her argument. At points in the book she alludes to slaves, lower classes and other groups entering the discussion of sensibility and framing their own arguments in a likewise fashion, but to me, she did not fully flesh these topics out.
Knott, Sensibility and the American Revolution
In this book Knott discusses sensibility and the sentimental project during the American Revolution. The framework is Philadelphia during the second half of the XVIII th century. The author starts with a discussion about the origins and definitions of the term sensibility showing the change in meanings during the years of the late colonial period until the early republic. This discussion is presented from the middling and emergent elite perspective.
In the introduction the author discusses the themes that constitute the idea of sensibility: Atlantic influences (immigrants), class (middling and patriotic elite), and the military and the state. According to Knott sensibility was formed during the colonial years having great influence by the British values and beliefs. The author builds her arguments by discussing the “transatlantic conduit” personified by the colonial booksellers and the trained doctors. She analyses the various influences received from the novels in the daily lives of people from the American middle class and elite. Through the study of journals, among other documents, the author tries to characterize the Americanization of sensibility during the period of the American Revolution. From those accounts the author concludes that those sentimental coteries depended on medical and print culture. The coteries “turned sentimental and nervous discourses into social practice” (148).
“The sentimental project, the efflorescent of investment in sensibility, was the response of members of the middling sort and the accommodating, progressive elite (…) [while] “Society” was the main terrain of the sentimental project” (199). There was the intent to “remake the society from the ground up where the “sensible” self was open to personal change and an agent of social reform” (2). The author discusses the self and relates it to the society as part of this sentimental project, but with focus on the sensible self of Christian, white, and male (mostly). The insensible Native American, black slaves and other poor groups in the society do not have a voice in this project for the new Constitution.
The author mentions that the American Revolution is about the state with a shift in the political power, but not representing a major change in the social structure of the colonial society. Knott presents the revolution as started from the middling class and elite and reveals that there was not a very strong argumentation for the separation.
The author presents complex ideas about self and sensibility in the formation of the society in the project of the republic. The discussion about the origin of the sensibility and how this is constituted along the colonial years is particular interesting. However, the narrative as for the repetition reminds the book of Sigal. The work with the sources and the approach is close to Morgan and Trouillot. This book tells us about ordinary people’s lives, but thosw people are not the silenced people from the bottom history, they read, they write, and they have voice for they sensibility.
In the introduction the author discusses the themes that constitute the idea of sensibility: Atlantic influences (immigrants), class (middling and patriotic elite), and the military and the state. According to Knott sensibility was formed during the colonial years having great influence by the British values and beliefs. The author builds her arguments by discussing the “transatlantic conduit” personified by the colonial booksellers and the trained doctors. She analyses the various influences received from the novels in the daily lives of people from the American middle class and elite. Through the study of journals, among other documents, the author tries to characterize the Americanization of sensibility during the period of the American Revolution. From those accounts the author concludes that those sentimental coteries depended on medical and print culture. The coteries “turned sentimental and nervous discourses into social practice” (148).
“The sentimental project, the efflorescent of investment in sensibility, was the response of members of the middling sort and the accommodating, progressive elite (…) [while] “Society” was the main terrain of the sentimental project” (199). There was the intent to “remake the society from the ground up where the “sensible” self was open to personal change and an agent of social reform” (2). The author discusses the self and relates it to the society as part of this sentimental project, but with focus on the sensible self of Christian, white, and male (mostly). The insensible Native American, black slaves and other poor groups in the society do not have a voice in this project for the new Constitution.
The author mentions that the American Revolution is about the state with a shift in the political power, but not representing a major change in the social structure of the colonial society. Knott presents the revolution as started from the middling class and elite and reveals that there was not a very strong argumentation for the separation.
The author presents complex ideas about self and sensibility in the formation of the society in the project of the republic. The discussion about the origin of the sensibility and how this is constituted along the colonial years is particular interesting. However, the narrative as for the repetition reminds the book of Sigal. The work with the sources and the approach is close to Morgan and Trouillot. This book tells us about ordinary people’s lives, but thosw people are not the silenced people from the bottom history, they read, they write, and they have voice for they sensibility.
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