Tristram Shandy

676 Pages·1980·81.71 MB·English

by  Laurence Sterne

A NORTON CRITICAL E
Tristram Shandy
LAURENCE STERNE
EDITED BY HOWARD ANDERSON
AN AUTHORITATIVE TEXT
THE AUTHOR ON THE NOVEL
CRITICISM

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TRISTRAM SHANDY
AN AUTHORITATIVE TEXT
THE AUTHOR ON THE NOVEL
CRITICISM
W. W. NORTON & COMPANY, INC.
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m- A NORTON CRITICAL EDITION <«-
LAURENCE STERNE
TRISTRAM SHANDY
AN AUTHORITATIVE TEXT
THE AUTHOR ON THE NOVEL
CRITICISM
-»M«-
Edited hy
HOWARD ANDERSON
MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY
4fr
W W
NORTON & COMPANY
• •
New York London
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Howard Anderson: from PMLA, 86 (1971), 966-73. Reprinted by permission of the
ModernLanguage AssociationofAmerica.
Wayne Booth: from Modern Philology, XIVIII (1951), 172-83. Reprinted by per-
missionofthe UniversityofChicago Press andthe author.
Sigurd Burkhardt: from ELH, 28 (1961), 70-88. Reprinted by permission of the
JohnsHopkinsUniversityPress.
Lodwick Hartley: from Laurence Sterne in the Twentieth Century. Copyright © 1966
by The University Press of North Carolina. Reprinted by permission of the pub-
lisher.
J. Paul Hunter: from Novel, 4 (1971), 132-46. Reprinted by permission of the pub-
lisherandthe author.
Douglas Jefferson: from Essays in Criticism, I (1951), 225-48. Reprinted by per-
mission ofthepublisher.
Richard A. Lanham: from Tristram Shandy and the Games of Pleasure. Copyright
© 1973 by The Regents of the University of California. Reprinted by permission
oftheUniversityofCaliforniaPress.
Jean-Jacques Mayoux: from The Winged Skull edited by Arthur Cash and John
Stedmond. Copyright © 1971 by Kent State University Press. Reprinted by per-
missionofthepublishers.
Toby A. Olshin: from Genre, 4 (1971), 360-75. Reprinted by permission of the
UniversityofOklahoma.
Charles Parish: from College English, 22 (December 1960), 143-50. Copyright ©
1960 by the National Council of Teachers of English. Reprinted by permission of
thepublisherandthe author.
William Bowman Piper: from Laurence Sterne by William Bowman Piper. Copyright
© 1965 by Twayne Publishers, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Twayne Pub-
Ushers, a Division ofG. K. Hall&Co., Boston.
Martin Price: from To the Palace of Wisdom (New York: Doubleday, 1964). Re-
printedbypermission ofthe author.
Copyright © 1980byW. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
LibraryofCongress Cataloging in Publication Data
Sterne, Laurence, 1713-1768.
Tristram Shandy: an authoritative text,backgrounds
and sources, criticism.
(A Norton critical edition)
Bibliography: p.
1. Sterne, Laurence, 1713-1768. Thelifeand
opinions ofTristram Shandy,gentleman. I. Anderson,
Howard Peter. II. Title.
PR3714.T73A5 1979 823'.6 79-277
ISBN 0-393-01244-1
ISBN0-393-95034-4pbk.
Published simultaneously in Canadaby GeorgeJ. McLeod Limited,
Toronto. Printed in the United States ofAmerica. Allrightsreserved.
FIRST EDITION
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Contents
Preface vii
Chronologyof Sterne's Life xi
The Text of TristramShandy xiii
TheAuthoron the Novel 459
To Robert Dodsley 461
To a Friend 461
To Robert Dodsley 462
To Dr. Noah Thomas 462
[?]
To Jane [?] Fenton 465
To Stephen Croft 466
ToJohn Hall-Stevenson 466
To Lady Anna Dacre 466
[?]
To RobertFoley 466
To Elizabeth Montagu 467
To Robert Foley 467
Criticism 469
Contemporary Responses 471
William Kenrick • Reviewof Tristram Shandy 471
From theCriticalReview 472
From theLondon Magazine 472
From theRoyal FemaleMagazine
473
Horace Walpole • Letter to SirDavid Dalrymple 473
Letter to the UniversalMagazineofKnowledgeand
Pleasure
474
James Boswell • From "A Poetical Epistle" 475
Letter toLloyd'sEveningPost 479
Thomas Gray • LettertoThomas Warton the
Younger
479
Oliver Goldsmith • From The Citizen of the World 480
vi • Contents
Edmund Burke • Review of Tristram Shandy 481
Samuel Richardson • Letterto Mark Hildesley 482
John Langhorne • Review of Tristram Shandy 482
Samuel Johnson • Conversation with Boswell 484
Early-Nineteenth-Century Criticism 485
Samuel TaylorColeridge • [Sterne's Wit and
Humor] 485
William Hazlitt • [Sterne's Style] 488
SirWalter Scott • Laurence Sterne 489
William MakepeaceThackeray • Sterneand
Goldsmith
493
Twentieth-Century Studies 495
Lodwick Hartley • [The Genius of Laurence Sterne] 495
D. W. Jefferson • Tristram Shandy and theTradition
of Learned Wit 502
TobyA. Olshin Genreand Tristram Shandy:
•
The Novel ofQuickness 521
WayneBooth • Did Sterne Complete Tristram
Shandy? 532
William Bowman Piper • Tristram's Digressive
Artistry 548
Martin Price • [TheArtof the Natural] 562
Jean-Jacques Mayoux • Variations on theTime-Sense
in Tristram Shandy 571
Richard A. Lanham • Games, Play, Seriousness 584
Sigurd Burckhardt • TristramShandy's Law of
Gravity 595
Howard Anderson Tristram Shandy and the
•
Reader's Imagination 610
J. Paul Hunter • Responseas Reformation:
Tristram Shandyand theArtof Interruption 623
Charles Parish • ATableof Contents for Tristram
Shandy 640
Bibliography 649
Pref;ace
—
Tristram Sh—andy was a sensation first in England, then through
all of Europe from the time the first two volumes appeared in the
winter of 1760. And despite Dr. Johnson's unflattering choice of the
book to exemplify his dictum that "nothing odd can last," it main-
tained its renown (though at times somewhat dubiously) through
the nineteenth century, to emerge in our own time as the most
modern of eighteenth-century novels.
An explanation for such endurance is that it was from the begin-
ning a paradoxical synthesis of the old and the new. Artfully con-
structed to confound its reader's expectations, it did so with the aim
of revealing the infinite ways in which conventional ideas of all
sorts have handcuffed our minds and imaginations. This aim, and
the satiric attacks on pedantry (whether academic, medical, legal,
or clerical) through which it is realized, link Tristram Shandy to a
great tradition of learned wit that extends back through Swift to
Burton, Cervantes, Erasmus, and Rabelais, and beyond to classical
writers like Lucian and Petronius. Like these writers, Sterne probes
the abstractions which pedants put in place of life, dilating on the
humorous potential of such a process, but also revealing the ap-
palling self-interest from which it originates.
But the world of Tristram Shandy is at the same time inhabited
by characters of a kind new to the eighteenth century. In Tristram's
father, Walter Shandy, and even more in his uncle Toby, Sterne
created people who are as much dominated as any pedant by the
"hobby-horses" that occupy their minds, but who are given life and
freedom by the strength of their generous sympathy with one an-
otherand the world. Don Quixote had been something like this, and
so had Fielding's Parson Adams. But in Uncle Toby, Sterne realized
for the first time a character embody—ing the uniqueness, indeed the
eccentricity, of every human being alive and loveable in his in-
dividuality.
It is finally to Tristram himself, however, that the reader owes the
humorous and humiliating process of self-revelation that is at the
core of our experience with this novel. The narrator's insight into
the ways in which our arbitrary and unexplored assumptions about
fiction shape our lives spe—aks perhaps most strongly to concerns of
twentieth-century readers and writers. Like Joyce and Beckett,
Sterne knows that our conception of what constitutes a real story
has found its way into our perception of all experience. And the
result is nearly always a failure to notice and value whatever reality
vii
—
viii • Preface
does not coincide with our preconceptions about what is real. That
leads, further, to disappointment in (or blind refusal to face) what-
ever cannot be reconciled with a narrow definition of the "beau-
tiful." From the moment that Tristram Shandy begins his story
where no one else ever began one, we are confronted with the
challenge of an imagination that sees all of life, rather than just a
part, as its natural habitat. Or to put it another way, Sterne's vision
ofartis large enough tobe undauntedbyany subjectmatter.
The various ways that Tristram Shandy has, from the first, drawn
readers in and spoken—to them, are suggested by the responses
contemporary and later assembled in this edition. Like the other
greatest novels of the eighteenth century (at least in this), Tristram
Shandy raises nearly all the questions that matter in the study of
fiction in whatever age. From the remote literary past that figures so
largely as the ground from which the novel springs, to contem-
porary speculations on the interrelations between art and the cul-
ture as a whole, the essays collected here outline some of the most
important ofthevarious rewardinglinesleadinginto this novel.
The present text follows the first London editions of Tristram
Shandy, published between December 1759 and January 1767.
Sterne changed publishers between the fourth and fifth volumes,
from R. & J. Dodsley to T. Becket & P. A. Dehondt. There is no
sign that Sterne, having been taken up so suddenly in the literary
and social world of London, and indeed of Europe, ever made
deliberate changes in the texts of the editions of the novel published
during his life. It was in any case not long from the publication of
the first volumes to the last (1759-67). Sterne died in March of
1768. I have amended obvious errors; typographical or otherwise, it
is usually impossible to tell. So I have not corrected spelling, except
to make it consistent where the lapses appear accidental; spelling
was far less regularized in the eighteenth century than it is today.
The long eighteenth-century s (more like an / in modern printing)
hasbeen changed, and the quotation marks thathead every line in a
speech of several lines have been eliminated. But Sterne is much
inclined to spell words, especially odd words, differently from time
to time, and those variations remain. Beginning with Volume VII,
his printers sharply reduce the number of names and other words
italicized; I have however regularized the last three volumes to
conform to the first six.
No one could annotate Tristram Shandy since 1940 without
owing a great debt to James Work. His edition of the novel is
probably the chief reason for the novel's renewed popularity in the
colleges and universities in our own time, and certainly that edition
is largely responsible for the kind of interest that resulted in the
recent essays published here. Among the editions that followed