Sterne: Tristram Shandy

by Wolfgang Iser (Editor), David Henry Wilson (Translator)

Overview

Without a beginning and without an end, Tristram Shandy moves in many different directions, defying the conventional expectations of its readers. Wolfgang Iser shows how Sterne exploits the philosophy of his day and its cognitive deficiencies, using digression, humour and play to convey experience of subjectivity, and implicitly to expose the traditional concept of the self.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521312639
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	04/28/1988
Series:	Landmarks of World Literature
Pages:	156
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.99(h) x 0.63(d)

Table of Contents

Part I. Subjectivity revealed through textual fields of reference: 1. Does Tristram Shandy have a beginning?; 2. Subjectivity discovered through Locke's philosophy; 3. Locke's philosophy as a pattern of communication; 4. Manic subjectivity; 5. Melancholic subjectivity; 6. Decentred subjectivity; 7. Wit and judgment; 8. The discovery of communication by verbalising subjectivity; 9. The body semiotics of subjectivity as discovery of man's natural morality; 10. Eighteenth-century anthropology; Part II. Writing strategies: 11. The first-person narrator; 12. Interruption; 13. Digression; 14.Equivocation; Part III. The Play of the Text: 15. The imaginary scene; 16. The games played; 17. The humour.