The New Age of Sentimentality

Arts & Ideas

BBC

Society & Culture

4.2 • 599 Ratings

🗓️ 18 April 2019

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Charles Dickens. Walt Disney. The Romantic poets..These renowned artists and entertainers were all accused of being “over-sentimental”. But is our own age topping them all – with its culture of grief memoirs, gushing obituaries and feel-good fiction? Three Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature join Rana Mitter at the Free Thinking Festival to take a hard look at whether contemporary culture has “gone soft”.

Lisa Appignanesi is the author of books including Everyday Madness: On Grief, Anger, Loss and Love; Mad, Bad, and Sad: A History of Women and the Mind Doctors; All About Love: Anatomy of an Unruly Emotion and Trials of Passion: Crimes in the Name of Love and Madness. She is Chair of the Royal Society of Literature Council.

Irenosen Okojie is author of a novel Butterfly Fish and a short story collection Speak Gigantular - surreal tales of love and loneliness. She has written for The New York Times, The Observer, and The Huffington Post and is currently running a writing workshop at London’s South Bank.

Rachel Hewitt’s books include A Revolution of Feeling:The Decade that Forged the Modern Mind and Map of a Nation: A Biography of the Ordnance Survey. She is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at Newcastle University, where she is also Deputy Director of the Newcastle Centre for Literary Arts.

Producer: Zahid Warley

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps
0:21.2	it. It's a long time ago, right? It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream
0:26.1	van plays music when it's out of ice cream. Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds. BBC Sounds,
0:34.5	music, radio, podcasts. I'm Matthew Sweet, and in moment, we'll be bringing you one of the discussions recorded at our Freethinking Festival.
0:43.2	For this year's theme, we set out to explore the emotions, so be ready with your happy, or sad, or enraged face, just after this short message.
0:52.8	Why does music move us?
0:54.7	How does it do it?
0:56.4	Well, if these are questions that have been firing you up, I've got the very podcast for you.
1:01.9	I'm Tom Service from BBC Radio 3 and from Schubert's symphonies to video game music,
1:06.7	from how to start a piece of music and when to end it.
1:09.9	From background music to Birdsong, from Beethoven to Beyonce, from Bach to start a piece of music and when to end it. From background music to bird song,
1:12.4	from Beethoven to Beyonce, from Bach to the future.
1:16.7	Thank you very much indeed.
1:18.1	The Listing Service podcast is your guide to how music works.
1:22.2	Add all kinds of music to the mastery and mechanics behind the magic.
1:27.0	Just search for the listening service
1:29.2	on BBC Sounds and learn more about the music we all love.
1:43.7	They say nostalgia ain't what it used to be. But what about sentimentality? Charles Dickens,
1:50.7	the romantic poets, the real housewives of Cheshire, they've all been accused of being
1:55.5	over-sentimental. But is our own age, topping all of those, with its culture of grief
2:00.6	memoirs, gushing obituaries, and feel-good fiction?
2:03.8	Well, we've got three fellows of the Royal Society of Literature to take a hard look at whether contemporary culture has gone soft.
	...

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