ABOUT THIS BOOK

Laurence Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy continues to be as widely read and admired as upon its first appearance. Deemed more accessible than Sterne’s Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, and often assigned as a college text, A Sentimental Journey has received its share of critical attention, but—unlike Tristram Shandy—to date it has not been the subject of a dedicated anthology of critical essays. This volume fills that gap with fresh perspectives on Sterne’s novel that will appeal to students and critics alike. Together with an introduction that situates each essay within A Sentimental Journey’s reception history, and a tailpiece detailing the culmination of Sterne’s career and his death, this volume presents a cohesive approach to this significant text that is simultaneously grounded and revelatory.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

W. B. GERARD taught literature and creative writing at Auburn University at Montgomery. He authored Laurence Sterne and the Visual Imagination and was the editor of Divine Rhetoric: Essays on the Sermons of Laurence Sterne and coeditor of volume 9 of the Florida Edition of the Works of Laurence Sterne, The Miscellaneous Writings. He was the coeditor of the semiannual journal The Scriblerianand the Kit-Cats and general editor of THAT Literary Review. Sadly, Blake Gerard passed away during the final stages of this book’s production.

M-C. NEWBOULD teaches English at the University of Cambridge in UK, where she is a fellow of Wolfson College. Her publication Adaptations of Laurence Sterne’s Fiction: Sterneana, 1760-1840 covers the numerous creative responses that Sterne’s work inspired. This material forms the basis for a digitization project she is running with Cambridge University Library.

REVIEWS

"This collection brings together a group of distinguished Sterne scholars whose focus on the author’s final publication demonstrates the way new questions, new methodologies, new pairings, and new contexts can invigorate our understanding of Sterne, his world, and his work."

— Elizabeth Kraft, author of Laurence Sterne Revisited

"A welcome addition to criticism on Sterne."

— XVII-XVIII

"The strength of the resulting volume lies not only in the constituent essays, but also in the intelligence and creativity with which Newbould and Gerard have disposed and framed them, setting them in constantly illuminating conversation with one another. In their expert editorial hands, A Sentimental Journey has never looked so rich in imaginative implication and interpretative possibility."

— The Shandean

"The prime virtue of this collection is that it combines more traditional literary approaches with more recent models of literary scholarship, influenced by affect theory, gender studies, animal studies, and thing theory. As such, it stands as a valuable snapshot of Sterne studies in the present."

— Jesse Molesworth, author of Chance and the Eighteenth-Century Novel: Realism, Probability, Magic

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Illustrations
Abbreviations and Conventions
W. B. Gerard and M-C. Newbould, “Introduction: A Sentimental Journey’s Critical Legacies.”
I. Men, Women, and other Animals
1. Shaun Regan, “Refining Masculinity in Yorick’s Journey: Courtesy, Chivalry, Gallantry.”
2. Julia Banister, “Yorick’s War: Patriot Politics, Military Men, and Willing Women in A Sentimental Journey.”
3. Glynis Ridley, “Sterne’s Journey into Animal Affect.”
II. Words, Structures, Things
4. Chris Ewers, “Spatial Digression and the Borders of Knowledge in A Sentimental Journey.”
5. Alexander Hardie-Forsyth, “(O)economy and Order: Laurence Sterne’s Chaptering.”
6. Fraser Easton, "Yorick's Speech and the Starling's Song: The Limits of Elocution in A Sentimental Journey"
7. Jennifer Preston Wilson, “Things of the Spirit: Vibrant Matter in A Sentimental Journey.”
III. Historical Contexts, Rewritten Texts
8. Melvyn New, “Boswell and Sterne in 1768.”
9. Peter Budrin, “The Shadow of Eliza: Sterne’s Underplot in A Sentimental Journey.”
10. Paul Goring, “Debt, Death, and Literary Inheritance: The Ends of Sterne and A Sentimental Journey.”
Pat Rogers, “Afterword”
Acknowledgments
Works Cited and Selected Bibliography
Index
About the Contributors