"The Eyes of Other People": Adam Smith's Triangular Sympathy and the Sentimental Novel

This article reexamines Adam Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments to show how a re-conception of sympathy as novelistic rather than dramatic has important implications for the eighteenth-century sentimental novel. Smith speaks of a triangulation of sympathy that is antithetical to drama: we view the emotional states of others not only from our own perspective but also from the third-person perspective of an impartial spectator. Concluding with readings Samuel Richardson, Henry Mackenzie and LaurenceSterne, I make two salutary observations: we should be cautious about reading distance in sentimental novels as evidence of irony or satire; and that time distance, and reflectionare necessary conditions of sympathy.