Sentiment

The term “sentiment” marks the recognition that emotions are social and historical. We tend to think of feelings as personal and interior—yet it is often easy to see that they are structured and shared. “Sentiment,” “sentimental,” and “sentimentality” are used at moments when the entanglement of the subjective and the public is explicitly acknowledged or (often) invoked and obscured. They are vexed and value-laden terms, which have a complex range of uses in everyday speech and have been the focus of much debate in literary history, American studies, and cultural studies.