Conclusions

Summary

I have argued that sentimental narratives occupy a central place in the project of the French Enlightenment. Making such an argument requires a readiness to open up links – between categories, between genres and text types, between periods – which have sometimes been artificially separated. Between categories: reason and sentiment can no longer be posited as contradictory polarities in eighteenth-century cultural formations; rationality can be accessed experientially and affectively, just as the constitution of reason as a historical category uses textual procedures entirely consonant with sentimental narratives. Between genres and text types: one of my basic presuppositions throughout is that the formal, as opposed to the thematic analysis of texts is the best route to their historical significance. The links which I have shown between literary texts (both canonical and marginal) and other forms of discourse – political, social, economic and historical – rely on a principle of comparability which is essentially formal. Between periods: in my narrative, the French Revolution is neither a point of departure nor a point of arrival, but rather the central historical experience around which transformations in ideological and discursive formations are articulated.