4.5: Sensationalism
Sentimentalism and sensationalism are the interrelated poles of the popular literature rejected by American literary history until the last few decades. Sensationalism refers to texts that provide sexual titillation, evoke terror, and represent disturbing and unusual behavior and images merely to create a reaction in readers. Texts in this category also often focused on the social conditions that surrounded urban crime and immorality. It drew on and grew out of the literary Gothic that you read about previously. Read this introduction to sensationalism in the antebellum period.