Laurence Sterne
By: Manfred Pfister.
Contributors: British Council.
Series: Writers and their work; Writers and their work (Unnumbered)
Publisher: Northcote House in Association with the British Council
Published: 2001
Place of publication: Devon
Language: eng
Number of pages: 128
Subjects: Sterne, Laurence, 1713-1768 -- Criticism and interpretation.
Description: "Despite the immense popularity of Laurence Sterne's work during his lifetime, his contribution to the novel form and experimentalism has only been acknowledged since his death. His contemporaries Richardson and Goldsmith denounced his archaic methods and took offence at his playful irreverence but his oddity is never accidental nor perverse; it is the strategy of an inventive, thoughtful, comic talent. Tristram Shandy, perhaps his best loved work, defies convention at every turn, distributing narrative content across a bafflingly idiosyncratic time-scheme interrupted by digressions, authorial comments and interferences with the printed fabric of the book. This comically fragmented storyline is a reaction against the linear narratives of Fielding and Richardson; aiming instead at a realistic impressionism, a shape determined by the association of ideas. This study reads Sterne's work in the light of modern literary theory as befits an artist before his time."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 111-121) and index.