Sterne, Tristram, Yorick (eBook)

These thirteen essays represent a very wide range of approaches to the fictions of Laurence Sterne, who has certainly evolved into the eighteenth century's most important influence on modern and postmodern literature. While each essay centers on his written texts or his lived contexts, they together offer homage to his endurance as an author emulated by many modern writers—Nietzsche, Proust, Woolf, Joyce, Mann, Marías, Goytisolo, Fuentes, Rushdie, and Pamuk; indeed, what important writer in the past 150 years has not been influenced by Sterne?

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Sterne, Tristram, Yorick: Tercentenary Essays on Laurence Sterne derives from the Laurence Sterne Tercentenary Conference held at Royal Holloway, University of London, on July 811, 2013. It was attended by some eighty scholars from fourteen countries; the conference heard more than sixty papers. The organizers invited participants to submit revised versions of their contributions for this volume, and the thirteen selected exhibit, it is hoped, the defining features both of the conference and of Sterne studies at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It is worth remarking that the selected authors represent seven countries; that Sterne may well be the most internationally accepted of all eighteenth-century English authors is certainly a claim worthy of a sentimental traveler.This collection recognizes three faces of Sterne, beginning with several biographical essays examining, respectively, his celebrity status, family life, politics, and philosophy. The second face is that of Tristram, studied from vantage points provided by ethics, linguistics, gender studies, and comparative literature. The final group of essays examines the face of Yorick as the protagonist of A Sentimental Journey, beginning with an ethnographic study of relationships, moving through questions of identity, and concluding with the possible future of literary studiesa return to aesthetics.