Satire, Comedy and Tragedy

Richard Raymond isProfessor Emeritus of English, Mississippi State University.

• Preface; 1. Walter, Toby, Tristram, and the Reader: Sterne’s Revision of “Dullness”; 2.The Yorick Standard, Walter’s Benevolent Dullness, and Tristram’s Friends:The Plot of Satire in Tristram Shandy; 3. “TrueShandeism”: The Unhappy Comic Action in Tristram Shandy; 4. Isolation and Death: The Tragic Undertones of Shandean Benevolent Dullness; 5. Benevolent Dullness, Ambiguity, and the Reader: Modal Complexity and the Plots of Tristram Shandy; 6. Laurence Sterne’s Letters; 7. The Shandean Sermons of Parson Sterne; 8. Parson Yorick in A Sentimental Journey and in A Continuation of Bramine’s Journal; 9. The International Perspective on Tristram Shandy and the Argument for Using Writing- to-Learn Strategies to Teach Sterne’s Globally Significant Novel ; References; Index

With admirable coverage (the letters and sermons as well as the novels) and a sure grasp of the longue durée of Tristram Shandy criticism, Richard C. Raymond is a thoughtful guide to the rich interpretive possibilities of Sterne’s masterpiece.-- Thomas Keymer, Chancellor Henry N.R. Jackman University Professor of English, University of Toronto.