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First published in 1995. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

English literature --- Sterne, Laurence, --- Yorick, --- Sterne, Laurence --- Stʻērn, Lawrēns, --- Stern, Lourens, --- Stern, Lorens, --- Стерн, Лоренс, --- Στερν, Λωρενς, --- Iorik, --- Sterne, --- Sŭtʻŏn, Lorensŭ,

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These thirteen essays represent a very wide range of approaches to the fictions of Laurence Sterne, who has certainly evolved into the eighteenth century's most important influence on modern and postmodern literature. While each essay centers on his written texts or his lived contexts, they together offer homage to his endurance as an author emulated by many modern writers-Nietzsche, Proust, Woolf, Joyce, Mann, Marías, Goytisolo, Fuentes, Rushdie, and Pamuk; indeed, what important writer in the past 150 years has not been influenced by Sterne?

Sterne, Laurence, --- Criticism and interpretation. --- Appreciation. --- Sterne, Laurence --- Stʻērn, Lawrēns, --- Yorick, --- Stern, Lourens, --- Stern, Lorens, --- Стерн, Лоренс, --- Στερν, Λωρενς, --- Iorik, --- Sterne, --- Sŭtʻŏn, Lorensŭ,

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Novelists, English --- Sterne, Laurence, --- -English novelists --- Biography --- Sterne, Laurence --- -Biography --- Yorick, --- Stʻērn, Lawrēns, --- Stern, Lourens, --- Stern, Lorens, --- Стерн, Лоренс, --- Στερν, Λωρενς, --- Iorik, --- Sterne, --- Sŭtʻŏn, Lorensŭ, --- Novelists, English - 18th century - Biography --- Sterne, Laurence, - 1713-1768

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With their appearance during the 1760's, the five instalments of Laurence Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman caused something like a booksellers’ hype. Small publishers and anonymous imitators seized on Sterne’s success by bringing out great numbers of spurious new volumes, critical or ironic pamphlets, and works that in style and title express a congeniality with Tristram Shandy . This study explores these eighteenth-century imitations as indicators of contemporary assumptions about Sterne’s intentions. Comparisons between the original, the first reactions, and a number of late eighteenth-century imitations, show that Tristram Shandy was initially read against the background of Augustan and Grub-street satire. The earliest imitators harked back to traditions of banter and folklore, bawdy and grotesque humour, pathetic stories and orthodox religiosity, reaffirming a pattern of moral and aesthetic values that was conservative for its time. Philosophical Sentimentalism appears to have been a late development. It is also argued that, partly because of their bad reputation, some of the authors of forgeries and parodies had a greater influence on the original than the reviewers to whom Sterne is often said to have listened. The imitators followed leads and themes in the first instalments, developing them according to their own conception of Sterne’s project and the reasons for his success. As a consequence, they unintentially put a pressure on Sterne to alter his course, and even to abandon some of the narrative lines and themes he had set out for himself. The literature section contains a chronological checklist of English eighteenth-century Sterneana.

Sterne, Laurence, --- Yorick, --- Stʻērn, Lawrēns, --- Stern, Lourens, --- Iorik, --- Sterne, --- Sŭtʻŏn, Lorensŭ, --- Criticism and interpretation. --- Life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, gentleman (Sterne, Laurence) --- Tristram Shandy (Sterne, Laurence) --- Sterne, Laurence --- Stern, Lorens, --- Стерн, Лоренс, --- Στερν, Λωρενς,

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The author of Tristram Shandy made frequent use of literary fragments from other writers, as part of his own style. Laurence Sterne's quotations, plagiarisms and allusions were often employed in the service of the pleonasm, or 'performed pun'. Jonathan Lamb describes Sterne's operation of the pleonasm as his 'double principle'. He sees this style not as the key to some clever puzzle whose clues we go on solving in the hope of total disclosure of meaning (as some critics have claimed); rather the opposite, that it is a consoling reminder that neither we nor the text can ever be complete. Lamb severs Sterne from the Locke tradition and frees him from the 'influence' oriented studies which have aimed to authenticate him through his borrowings. This allows us to read him as a writer eagerly exploring the turns and paradoxes of associationist thought and adapting the rhetoric of the sublime to the stutterings of ordinary speech.

Sterne, Laurence --- Arts and Humanities --- Literature --- Experimental fiction, English --- Civilization, Modern --- Doubles in literature. --- History and criticism. --- Sterne, Laurence, --- Criticism and interpretation. --- Doppelgänger in literature --- Doppelgängers in literature --- Split self in literature --- Eighteenth century --- Stʻērn, Lawrēns, --- Yorick, --- Stern, Lourens, --- Stern, Lorens, --- Стерн, Лоренс, --- Στερν, Λωρενς, --- Iorik, --- Sterne, --- Sŭtʻŏn, Lorensŭ,