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STERNE handout for students2015 .doc (LSSCH)

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Laurence Sterne (1713-1768) The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (9 vols. 1759-1767) Class notes for students, compiled by Dr. Lioba Simon Schuhmacher, Universidad de Oviedo. Main sources: Ricks, C. 1967: Introduction to the Penguin ed. of Tristram Shandy / Simon J.J. 1985: York Notes on Tristram Shandy/ Wright, A. 1995: prólogo a la traducción de Javier Marías de La vida y las opiniones del caballero Tristram Shandy. Los sermones de Mr. Yorick/ Pollard,A.1973: Webster’s New World Companion to English and American Literature, New York, Popular Library/ Jefferson, D.W. 1957: “Tristram Shandy and its tradition” in: Ford, B. ed. 1957: The Pelican Guide to English Literature, vol. IV: From Dryden to Johnson, Harmondsworth, Pelican; British Council Literary Study Aids - Recorded Seminar on Tristram Shandy, led by J.W. Harper, University of York, 1977.

Laurence Sterne’s life • • • • • •

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24 November 1713: *Clonmel/Tipperary – Ireland (father: ensign; mother daughter of a sutler) Sterne grew up in different places, in the garrisons where his father served, and met military men 1723-31: school in Halifax, Yorkshire 1731: his father dies penniless in the West Indies 1733: Cambridge, Jesus College as a sizar (student with an expense allowance): philosophy, humanities and the classics. (B.A. in 1737) Reads Cervantes, Swift, Gargantua and Pantagruel by Rabelais, the philosophy of John Locke, Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) by Robert Burton, exceptional command of Latin (proof: Slawkenbergius’ Tale) 1738: appointed prebendary in a village in Yorkshire (Sutton-in-theForest) Sterne was a clergyman “without a divine calling” or religious fervour (fully secular behaviour) 1740: M.A. at Cambridge 1741: marries Elisabeth Lumley The marriage was unhappy from the beginning. His wife suffered from his “quiet attentions” to other women and went insane in 1758. 1745: birth of his only daughter, Lydia Slow progress in his church career, gets on well with his parishioners, spending the evenings in the company of local wits Hobbies: painting, music and other amusements. He writes sermons (later published as The Sermons of Mr. Yorick) which become quite popular. His health is poor, he suffers from haemorrhage of the lungs (tísis). 1759: Sterne unexpectedly embarks on writing, involved in the political and religious intrigues of his time, with a successful pamphlet on “A Political Romance”, a satire on local eccesiastical intrigue, later called: “The History of a good, warm watch-coat”. This encourages him to write the first volume of Tristram Shandy (immediate success and a social triumph in the London world of fashion). 1760: Sterne settles in Coxwold, Yorkshire, where he establishes his “Shandy Hall”. 1762-1764: journey to Paris (where he is enthusiastically received as an illustrious man) and the South of France

STERNE handout for students2015 .doc (LSSCH)

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Sterne spends more than a year in Toulouse to recover from his ill health, later in Montpellier and other places. 1765-1766: back to England, he continues with the publication of Tristram Shandy. 1766: again a journey to France and Italy, winter in Naples, little relief. Result: A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy (published 1768) - a delicate and delightful work. January 1767: the 9th or last volume of Tristram Shandy appears 1767: meets Elisabeth Draper (22), the wife of a Bombay official, in London, his last and best known flirtation (result: Journal to Eliza, published in 1904), which precipitates Sterne’s separation from his wife, and more painful, from his daughter. 17 March 1768: Sterne dies in London (buried there). 1969: Sterne Bicentenary Conference at the University of York: Sterne is re-interred with all due rites in Coxwold churchyard.

Laurence Sterne’s work The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (9 vols. 1759-1767) Traducciones al español: • José Antonio López de Letona (Madrid,1975); Vida y opiniones del caballero Tristram Shandy, ed. de Fernando Toda, traducción de José Antonio López de Letona, Madrid, Cátedra - Letras Universales, 1996 • Ana María Aznar (1976) Planeta • Javier Marías: Premio de Traducción Fray Luis de León en 1979 por su traducción (y notas): La vida y las opiniones del caballero Tristram Shandy. Los sermones de Mr. Yorick . Reedición, con una introducción de Andrew Wright, Madrid,1997(Alfaguara)

Opinions: The great German writer Gotthold Ephraim Lessing said: “I would have given ten years of my own life if I could have prolonged that of Sterne one more year.” Samuel Johnson: “Nothing odd will do long: Tristram Shandy did not last” (From: James Boswell The Life of Samuel Johnson, year 1776) A Cambridge don, in 1765: “Mark my words and remember what I say to you; however much it may be talked about at present, yet, depend upon it, in the course of twenty years, should any one wish to refer to the book in question, he will be obliged to go to an antiquary to inquire for it” (Penguin intro p.8) E.M. Forster:”Obviously a god is hidden in Tristram Shandy, his name is Muddle and some readers cannot accept him” James Joyce, when writing Finnegans Wake: “I’m trying to build many places of narrative with a single esthetic purpose. Did you ever read Laurence Sterne?” Further influences on Gustave Flaubert, Virginia Woolf, Samuel Beckett, Latinamerican authors (Bryce Echenique, Eduardo Galeano), etc. It still provokes fierce critical debates, generations of readers have found it hard to accept Sterne’s best-known work evidence of literary genius

STERNE handout for students2015 .doc (LSSCH)

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Sterne’s work is much loved but also much misunderstood Sterne takes delight in scandalising people “irreverent attitude towards literature” “a comic masterpiece” “a nonsensical book” bawdy, immoral, obscene, shrewd, unintelligible, pointless, exasperating, comic, funny, full of optimism and vitality, innovative, “nothing like a novel”, in short, in the words with which Sterne concludes his book: a cock and a bull story

Literary and other Influences in Tristram Shandy: The classics The tradition of wit François Rabelais: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1552: parodies on speculative philosophy) John Locke: Essay on Human Understanding (1690) Robert Burton: Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) Miguel de Cervantes: Don Quijote (1616) Jonathan Swift: A Tale of a Tub (1704), with his attacks on pedantry, digressions, critical attitude towards philosophers and theologians. However, whereas Swift embarks on savage attacks, Sterne is good-humoured and understanding Other arts: vocabulary on drawing and painting (Sterne was an amateur painter), subtleties of music (Sterne played the violin and the cello), theatre (stage directions for his characters)

General innovative features: An original contribution to the writing of fiction and to its technique by challenging the assumption that straight chronological order or a linear plot is the only possible structure for fiction and narrative Problem: Where do you begin (whether in writing or any thing else)? At birth. No, because much of the life is shaped before that point (family background, circumstances, etc., or vol I, ch.1: the moment he was conceived), but after 300 pages the question dogs the reader. long before the days of psychoanalysis and recent experiments with the novel, Sterne was fully aware that significance of experience can only be revealed by a conscious and honest retrospective language, typography, structure and technique have to reflect how the mind works (widely separated details, thoughts and incidents are reflected, etc.) There is no order or chronology: e.g. the preface appears in Vol. III, p.202, one digression brings along the next, as in a conversation. Most outstanding digressions: Slawkenbergius Tale (book IV), and The Story of Le Fever (book VI)

STERNE handout for students2015 .doc (LSSCH)

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Sterne fights an heroically absurd battle against time Sterne substitutes the omniscient and omnipotent narrator (as Fielding) with the vague half-knowledge and frustrated impotence of Tristram: in the end everybody is unknowable

Some concrete innovative stylistic-technical features: Sterne about his method of writing: “...this rhapsodical work”, “deviations from a straight line” and “unforeseen stoppages”, “Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine”, “digressive and progressive movements” “Writing, when properly managed (as you may be sure I think mine is) is but a different name for conversation” Association of ideas (Locke) A direct relationship with the reader, sometimes as man/men, but more often as woman/women: Sterne leaves room for the reader’s imagination: brilliant tactics of bringing out the limits of words wonderful gift for characterisation by gestures and movements: Uncle Toby and the fly (vol. II, ch. 12) Walter Shandy throws “himself prostrate across his bed”, with details of every movement (vo. II, ch. 29) long-winded sentences and complex syntax full of subordinate phrases Graphic and typographic devices: unspoken/unwritten words (as lewd ones, insults or delicate parts of the body: ****) graphs to show the narrative line a blank page for a torn-out chapter of 10 pages The corporal’s flourish with the stick: a twirling line on the page word-painting, drawing, sketching..., allusions to Raphael, William Hogarth, Joshua Reynolds musical style (Sterne played the violin an the cello, vol.I, ch.8, p.43), consistent use of musical metaphors ONOMATOPEIA: vol.V, ch.15, p.365: on tuning a fiddle: “Ptr..r..r..ing--twing-twang--prut--trut---’tis a cursed bad fiddle.--” so it goes on for 25 lines delighted professing of documentation full of parody and learned wit, a battery of learning (real and fake) Profane zest for theological speculation translations from Latin and texts in Latin An unconventional concept of chapters: some chapters consist of only one sentence. chapters on noses, names, on his –Tristram’s- name (from Trismegistus), doorhinges, chapters, sleep, sermons or whiskers...