Tristram Shandy

Now seen as one of the great English comic novels, Tristram Shandy caused a stir on publication in polite 18th-century English society. The novel broke with conventions of form and structure, foreshadowing Postmodern authors by 200 years, and scandalized with bawdy descriptions and rambling prose. Hugely influenced by Francis Bacon, Rabelais, and Jonathan Swift, clergyman Lawrence Sterne manages to both eloquently champion the literary and scientific views of the day, and to satirize those same idols in the next outrageous breath.The questionable ‘hero’ and narrator of the novel, the eponymous Tristram Shandy, attempts to tell the reader his life story, but as he digresse…