Sentimentalism is the habit, style, or taste of being sentimental: feeling, writing, or behaving as if tender emotion is the whole truth. It names the -ism — the practice — more than the person (the person is a sentimentalist, though people mix the two). You see it in stories that milk tears, in talk that makes the past only sweet, in art that would rather be touching than honest. The word is usually a criticism: too much soft feeling, not enough of the awkward rest. Though actually, some writers own it as a real way of caring, not only as a fault. It can also name an older literary mood that trusted feeling as a guide. In ordinary use, though, if someone complains of sentimentalism, they mean the emotion has been laid on thick, and the hard parts have been pushed offstage.

感傷主義；濫情的作風