With a new Introduction by Cedric Watts, Research Professor of English, University of Sussex.
Laurence Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman is a huge literary paradox, for it is both a novel and an anti-novel. As a comic novel replete with bawdy humour and generous sentiments, it introduces us to a vivid group of memorable characters, variously eccentric, farcical and endearing. As an anti-novel, it is a deliberately tantalising and exuberantly egoistic work, ostentatiously digressive, involving the reader in the labyrinthine creation of a purported autobiography.
This mercurial eighteenth-century text thus anticipates modernism and postmodernism. Vibrant and bizarre, Tristram Shandy provides an unforgettable experience. We may see why Nietzsche termed Sterne 'the most liberated spirit of all time'.
| ISBN: | 9781853262913 |
| Publication date: | 5th March 1996 |
| Author: | Laurence Sterne |
| Publisher: | Wordsworth Editions an imprint of Wordsworth Editions Ltd |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Pagination: | 452 pages |
| Series: | Wordsworth Classics |
| Genres: |
Classic fiction: general and literary |