NOT AUTHOR APPROVED Improving Passions: Sentimental Aesthetics and American Film By Charles Burnetts When did the sentimental start to mean 'awful'? Why are so many popular mainstream films dismissed for their sentimentality, and are there any meaningful differences between the sentimental and the melodramatic? These are some of the questions addressed in Charles Burnetts' illuminating genealogy of the concept as both a literary genre and an aesthetic philosophy, a tradition that prefigures the advent of film yet serves as a vital framework for understanding its emotional and ethical appeal. Examining 18th century 'moral sense' philosophy as a neglected but still important intellectual area for film theory, and drawing on case studies of film sentimentality during the early, classical and post-classical eras of US cinema, 'Sentimental Aesthetics in American Film' is an innovative exploration of the sentimental tradition as both theatrical genre and cultural logic. Charles Burnetts teaches film in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Kings University College, The University of Western Ontario