Origin of sentimental novels originated from which literary movement?

• A. Romanticism
• B. Realism
• C. Modernism
• D. Neoclassicism

Answer: (A)

Sentimental novels arise from a tradition that centers emotion, empathy, and the reader’s moral engagement with a story. This emphasis on feeling and the importance of inner life and imaginative experience aligns with Romanticism, which elevates emotion and individual perspective as essential to art. While earlier writing did explore sentiment, Romanticism crystallized and popularized works that aim to move readers to sympathy and virtue through vivid emotional scenes. The other movements emphasize different aims—Realism focuses on depicting life as it is, Modernism experiments with form and questions narrative authority, and Neoclassicism stresses order and rational restraint—so they don’t primarily constitute the source of sentimental fiction in the same way Romanticism does.