Laurence Sterne

by Walsh; Marcus

• ISBN13: 9780582368507
• ISBN10: 0582368502
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2002-07-18
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

The eighteenth century was a period when the modern Novel emerged through the work of writers such as Laurence Sterne (1713-68), Richardson, Defoe, Fielding and Johnson. However, the writing of Sterne is recognised as influencing modern writing from Joyce and Woolf onwards more than any of the other eighteenth century novelists.In the last twenty years Sterne's work has become a focus for a flourishing body of work and significant debates in many new and developing areas of literary theory which include gender, sexuality, postmodernism, and deconstruction. Sterne's major novel 'Tristram Shandy' is regarded as deploying a range of 'post-modern literary devices' expected to be found in late twentieth century work rather than in work written in the 1700s.  This volume combines the most interesting and stimulating recent critical thinking about Sterne and represents recent theoretical and critical debates surrounding Sterne's writing.

Author Biography

Marcus Walsh is Professor of English Literature in the Department of English at the University of Birmingham.

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION.

Sterne and 'Theory.'

Sterne and 'Theory' in the twentieth century.

Sterne and 'Theory' in the 1980s and 1990s.

This selection.

I. SENSE AND SENSIBILITY.

1. 'Sexualism and the Citizen of the World: Wycherley, Sterne and Male Homosocial Desire', Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick.

2. 'Laurence Sterne and the "Sociality" of the Novel', John Mullan.

II. FEMINISM/GENDER/SEXUALITIES.

3. 'Words for Sex: The Verbal-Sexual Continuum in Tristram Shandy', Ruth Perry.

4. 'Jobs Wife and Sterne's other Women', Melvyn New.

III. STERNE AND THE BODY.

5. '"Uncrystallized Flesh and Blood": The Body in Tristram Shandy', Juliet McMaster.

6. 'Running Out of Matter: The Body Exercised in Eighteenth-Century Fiction', Carol Houlihan Flynn.

IV. SOURCES, IMITATION, PLAGIARISM.

7. 'Sterne, Burton, and Ferriar: Allusions to the Anatomy of Melancholy in Volumes V to IX of Tristram Shandy.'

8. 'Sterne's System of Imitation' Jonathan Lamb.

V. NARRATIVE AND FORM.

9. 'Narrative Middles: a Preliminary Outline', J. Hillis Miller.

10. 'On Sterne's Page: Spatial Layout, Spatial Form, and Social Spaces in Tristram Shandy', Christopher Fanning.

Notes on Authors.

Further Reading.

Index.