The Introduction maps out the historical and theoretical context of Weeping Eyes, and is organised into three parts that each focus on a different ocular function. The first concentrates on crying eyes, comparing literary and scientific conceptions of tears in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and unpacking these through the contemporary theoretical lens of affect studies. The second part focuses on seeing eyes, outlining the key theoretical foundations of vision studies, and problematising long-standing associations that persist between seeing and knowing, and seeing and power. The final section takes up reading eyes, asking what sentimental texts and tears can teach us about the role feeling plays in our engagement with books. Taken together, these sections sketch out the alternative epistemologies and agencies of the eye that are elaborated throughout the rest of the study.

This essay offers a brief overview of the sentimental novel in the United States, with a focus on its role in the abolitionist movement. While delineating its conventions, the essay also challenges the conventional view of enslaved and free blacks presented by sentimentality.