Joan Aleshire: Breaking Apart: Emotion versus Sentimentality (July 1995)

Richard Hugo’s often-quoted remark that a writer must “risk sentimentality” may lead us to believe that the line between sentimentality and genuine emotion is a fine one. Yet in this lecture, Joan Aleshire shows how the two are radically different, and arise from two distinct stances a writer can take toward her material. In order to arrive at true feeling, Aleshire suggests, we must be willing to let go of what we think we know; she looks at work by Shakespeare, Sappho, Keats, Dickinson, Alice Munro and others for examples.