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| 3/18/1768 |
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Laurence Sterne and Tristram Shandy
Few of Reverend Laurence Sterne's Yorkshire parishioners could have anticipated his sudden and spectacular transformation from country parson to one of the most internationally-famous novelists of the eighteenth century. Had they been forewarned, they all could have predicted that his favorite themes would be sex and laughter. . . . |
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Bartleby: Columbia Encyclopedia
Find a short biography on the author's life and works.
"One of the most entertaining and original literary works in English, Tristram Shandy is, in a sense, a parody of a novel. It is a hodgepodge of character sketches, blank pages, dramatic action, transposed chapters, and various digressions. Sterne constantly obtrudes himself into the novel and is by turns witty, satiric, sentimental, knowledgeable, and obscene. Beneath this apparent chaos, however, is a structure based on the association of ideas. In Tristram Shandy Sterne enlarged the scope of the novel from the mere recording of external incidents to the depiction of a complex of internal impressions, thoughts, and feelings." |  | Online Books Page
Find the electronic texts of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy and A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy. | | The Victorian Web
A scholarly essay examines the humor in Tristam Shandy, explaining how its effect is created through the unusual and unanticipated use of language and incident.
"Sterne's comedy occurs when he thrusts things from one context into another. Sometimes this collision is caused by and sometimes it causes extreme and absurd extension of an idea, a word, or a thing beyond its usual sphere. Sterne's point is that these collisions always occur and that systems which ignore this are, in their seriousness and in their rigidity, absurd; and while Sterne may satirize particular systems or particular foibles they are most important as comic examples, not as targets in themselves. Sterne's primary purpose is not to attack but to drive away the spleen with laughter and understanding." | |
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The TinL masthead features photography by
Natasha D'Schommer
, and the book art featured is by Jim Rosenau.
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