The Comic Art of Laurence Sterne

Paradoxically, the name Sterne connotes both innovation and plagiarism; his writings are a strange mixture of the old and the next but this apparent incongruity helps to explain the nature of his comic art. His works show influences of Rabelais, Cervantes and Montaigne, at the same time foreshadowing modern developments in the "stream-of-consciousness" techniques of such writers as James Joyce, Thomas Mann and Virginia Woolf. In The Comic Art of Laurence Stern Professor Stedmond develops this theme of dichotomy and investigates some of the subtleties of Stern's complex and allusive method. The central focus of the study is on Tristam Shandy as comedy and on Sterne's use of Tristram a clown narrator; other chapters are devoted to the genres to which Tristam Shandy is related, to analysis of style, the satiric as well as the comic elements, and to the significant connections between the Sermons of Mr. Yorick and A Sentimental Journey. The author skillfully examines these various conventions which provide the building material of Sterne's work, but his main theme is Sterne as a great comic writer primarily concerned with "the comedy of human effort at communication." Everyone who likes the works of Laurence Sterne, both the scholar and the general reader, will enjoy this discerning appraisal of Stern's comic art.