Background, context and other related comments

[Lily]

Susanna wrote: "Lily wrote: "he regarded words as imprecise and treacherous;

Do you think Sterne would have been a filmmaker if he had lived during our time? I must admit that what I have enjoyed most about Trist..."

Well, I doubt Sterne would have considered images as more precise and less dangerous than words, but he was apparently astute at making money from what he produced and that might well include at least working with filmmakers if he lived during our time.

[Lily]

Susan wrote: "...reading TS in a book with no notes at all. This has worked fine for other 18th century novels..."

Are there particular other 18th century novels with which you find yourself comparing and contrasting TS? If so, are there any comparisons that might help us here think about the place of TS in the timeline of literature?

[Susan]

Lily wrote: "Susan wrote: "...reading TS in a book with no notes at all. This has worked fine for other 18th century novels..."

Are there particular other 18th century novels with which you find yourself compa..."

What an interesting question! None of the other eighteenth century novels I’ve read exactly reminds me of Tristram Shandy (Clarissa, Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders, Journal of the Plague Year, Tom Jones, The Vicar of Wakefield, Gulliver’s Travels, Rasselas, Candide) but it certainly reflects the ideas and interests of its age, and there are threads of discussion/interest it shares with some of them (religious and philosophic ideas, a playfulness in the narrative). What about for you, Lily?

[Lily]

Susan wrote: "What about for you, Lily?..."

[g] Turnaround is fair play, I guess!

I am not particularly well read in eighteen century (1700's) English literature -- for novels, I have tended to read authors of the twentieth century (1900's) and beyond, dipping back for the likes of Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, Charles Dickens, .... Tom Jones I encountered more in the movie version, although my hardcover copy is a signed gift from the man who escorted me to the theater that rainy night so many long years when still a college student (view spoiler)[, a man who might well have been a life partner if fate had not other plans for us. Please forgive this perhaps Shandy-like discursion, but it is Valentine week and the mind skips across time. (hide spoiler)] The shifts in time related to the way memory works, versus time itself, I do not recall encountering until far more modern texts. In fact, I still find it easier to read novels that treat time contiguously. I probably have only read Gulliver's Travels in versions for young readers, but most of the background material I have been reading suggests that Sterne's humor is far different from Swift's biting satire in A Tale of a Tub, which seems to be the one most often compared to Tristram. Sterne seems to be considered to provide a particularly private lives focus to the stories he tells. I'm still playing with what that "means."

[Lily]

@52 Susanna wrote: ...I must admit that what I have enjoyed most about Tristram Shandy is the prints that someone posted depicting various scenes from the book. ..."

My reaction is that the Hogarth prints related to the book present caricatures more than characters. While I certainly react to Dr. Slop as a caricature, for me, not so much so for others. Some even liken Toby's kind and admirable but straight forward, naive ways to a "town idiot," perhaps with a role not unlike that of a jester in a Shakespearean play. While I can hear the point being made and Sterne is known as a satirical writer, I have very mixed feelings about if and when to consider his characters in Tristram Shandy, including Tristram himself, as so amplified in characteristics as to classify as "caricatures." I wonder how the rest of you feel? I ask myself, what does it do to my reading of the book to move that judgement between character and caricature one way or the other ... and I don't have an answer.

[David]

For all of you still wondering what a Shandy is I hear Johnsonville now has a Summer Shandy Beer Brat made with Leinenkugel Summer Shandy beer.

https://www.allrecipes.com/johnsonvil...

https://www.leinie.com/beer/summer-sh...

I am going to have to do a Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy themed BBQ just to try these. I bet they will go well with roasted chestnuts.