Romantic Intimacy is a study of shared feeling as imagined in eighteenth century ethics, romantic literature, and twentieth century psychoanalysis. The term “intimacy”—which has always referred both to the inmost and personal, and to relationships of exceptional closeness—captures a tension between a confidence in the possibility of shared experience, and a competing belief that thoughts and feelings are irreducibly private. Original interpretations of Hume, Rousseau, Kant, Wordsworth, Coleridge and Austen show how aspirations toward mutual recognition give way to appreciation of varied, non-r ... More

Romantic Intimacy is a study of shared feeling as imagined in eighteenth century ethics, romantic literature, and twentieth century psychoanalysis. The term “intimacy”—which has always referred both to the inmost and personal, and to relationships of exceptional closeness—captures a tension between a confidence in the possibility of shared experience, and a competing belief that thoughts and feelings are irreducibly private. Original interpretations of Hume, Rousseau, Kant, Wordsworth, Coleridge and Austen show how aspirations toward mutual recognition give way to appreciation of varied, non-reciprocal forms of intimacy. The book concludes with accounts of empathy and unconscious communication in the psychoanalytic setting, revealing the persistence of romantic preoccupations in modernity. Romantic Intimacy explores how philosophical confidence in fellow-feeling and sympathy is transformed by literary attention to uneven forms of emotional response, including gratitude, disappointment, distraction, and absorption. In its wide-ranging and eclectic engagement with current debates on the relationship between ethics, affect, and aesthetics, the book will be crucial reading for students of eighteenth and nineteenth century culture, as well as for literary theorists.