Feeling Time: Duration, the Novel, and Eighteenth-Century Sensibility

208 Pages·2018·1.869 MB·English

by  Amit S. Yahav

Feeling Time
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Feeling Time
Duration, the Novel,
and Eighteenth-Century Sensibility
Amit S. Yahav
university of pennsylvania press
philadelphia
Copyright © 2018 University of Pennsylvania Press

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for
purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book
may be reproduced in any form by any means without
written permission from the publisher.

Published by
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104- 4112
www.upenn.edu/pennpress

Printed in the United States of America on acid-f ree paper
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Yahav, Amit S., author.
Title: Feeling time : duration, the novel, and eighteenth-century sensibility /
Amit S. Yahav.
Description: 1st edition. | Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2018] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017047728 | ISBN 978-0-8122-5017-6 (hardcover : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: English fiction—18th century—History and criticism. |
Time in literature. | Time—Philosophy. | Time perception in literature. |
Literature and society—England—History—18th century.
Classification: LCC PR830.T5 Y34 2018 | DDC 823/.509384—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017047728
To the luminous memory of Yossi
and to the vibrant presence of Ye’ela and Mikael
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Contents
Introduction. The Sensibility Chronotope 1
Chapter 1. Composing Human Time:
Locke, Hume, Addison, and Diderot 23
Chapter 2. Temporal Moralities and Momentums of Plot:
Richardson and Hutcheson 50
Chapter 3. Sympathetic Moments and Rhythmic Narration:
Sterne, Early Musicology, and the Elocutionists 82
Chapter 4. Durational Aesthetics and the Logic of Character:
Radcliffe, Burke, and Smith 116
Coda. The End of Human Time? 148
Notes 153
Bibliography 183
Index 193
Acknowledgments 197
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Introduction
The Sensibility Chronotope
Soon after discovering a human footprint on his island, Robinson Cru-
soe concludes that “it must be some of the Savages of the main Land over-
against me, who had wander’d out to Sea in their Canoes . . . [ and] I should
certainly have them come again in greater Numbers, and devour me” (113).1
While he is right to suspect that the island’s visitors are cannibals, he turns out
to be wrong about the threat they pose to his life; the natives are unlikely to
devour Crusoe upon encountering him, since they arrive at the island already
equipped with all they need for their ritual, not in search of supplies for it.
And just as they welcome as neighbors the survivors of the Spanish shipwreck
(161), they are also likely to welcome Crusoe as a living friend rather than as
dead foodstuff. Yet, if contrary to Crusoe’s anxieties, other men do not eat and
seem to have no intention of eating his body, they do consume his time.
While he thinks he is alone on the island, Crusoe approaches time as an
abundant resource and an abstract measure; he enjoys a “prodigious deal of
Time” (51), which he fills with a variety of tasks meticulously timed—
twenty- four days to rescue supplies from his drowned ship (52), three and a
half months to build a wall (56), two weeks for building a bower (75).2 Indeed,
during his initial years on the island, Crusoe feels he has “a World of Time”
(79) at his disposal; “My Time or Labour was little worth, and so it was as well
employ’d one way as another” (51), he confesses. But once he realizes that
other humans are close by— from the moment he discovers the footprint on
his island—h is time no longer easily circulates among varying purposes, and
he instead becomes solely devoted to formulating opinions about his new-
found neighbors and devising strategies for an encounter. For “many Hours,
Days; nay, I may say, Weeks and Months” (114), Crusoe is immobilized by
anxiety, which then gives way to a spurt of defensive action—b uilding a