ADAPTING TRISTRAM SHANDY by Adria Young Submitted in ...

The critical tradition surrounding Shandyism and all things Shandean, including
the annual journal The Shandean, devoted to all things Sterne, bandy around the terms
“Shandy” and “Shandean” quite freely and with implicit meanings. It appears that these
can refer and apply to any number of qualities that have some conceptual connection to
the novel. Indeed, if I were to list all of the adjectival uses of Shandean, I would reach my
word count. Tempting. But a short survey will suffice. As examples, I have come across
the following: “Shandean exactness” (Scott in Brewer 811), “Shandean postscript”
(Merton 1), “Shandean influence” (Gosse 1), “Shandean mixtures” (Rocha 100),
“Shandean elements” (Mallon 144), and “Shandean dialectic” (McNeil 150), all of which
call upon a specific quality of the text. In Shandyism and the Character of Romantic
Irony, Peter Conrad aims for a more substantial definition of the term, and argues that
Shandyism refers to “a character and a form: to an inspirationally erratic individual and
the chaotic structure he inhabits” (vii). While Conrad’s definition gives a bit of breadth to
the moniker, it is still a generalized understanding. But to be fair, Sterne himself was
vague in his use of the term. In the novel, we hear of Walters “Shandean System” (61),
the “Shandean hypothesis” (132), and “Shandean people” (145). And I am certain Sterne
created this Shandean label so that his work could follow the “Quixotic” and “Cervantic.”
Following the novel’s success, Sterne’s contemporaries also employed the term. In 1767,
Sterne received a “Shandean” walking stick (a Shandy-cane, if you will) from an admirer
of the novel in North Carolina, called so because it had “more handles than one” (Howes
169); 13 the Encyclopaedia Britannica of 1773 praised Sterne’s “Shandean manner”
(Howes 303); and the “Shandean tone” is a conversation subject in William Hill Brown’s
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