Sterne: A Sentimental Journey (1768)
From T’s class:
Sterne’s masterwork was Tristam Shandy. He attracted the interest of post-structuralists, though they didn’t do anything spectacular with him.
Sterne parodies empiricism, details. He offers us nonsensical minutaie. The characters get lost in the surface-level stuff and digressions and never get things done.
Sentimental Journey is a parody of the travel literature that tells you about great sights around the world. Yorick, however, goes to Versailles and doesn’t even mention the place in passing.
Sentimental Journey is startlingly sexualized; sex usually isn’t part of the sentimental tale, nor is the constant inclination to irony and satire.
SJ seeks to unsettle, to keep the reader off-base.
Sexuality is all over the place in Sterne, but it is very coded. It’s also always transactional. Perhaps, though, it’s merely flirtation ratehr than overt sexuality; flirtation is highly ritualized and rule-bound.
People said the masters of sentiment were Shakespeare, Cervantes and Sterne. There is a garishness, an opulence to that sentiment.
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