ADAPTING TRISTRAM SHANDY by Adria Young Submitted in ...

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
Given its reputation as an “unreadable” book, as the novel “most hated” by
undergraduate English students (Gow 14), and as a text that needs a manual on how to
teach it, 1 figuring out the attraction and execution of adapting Laurence Sterne’s The Life
and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman is a tough (chest)-nut to crack. Since the
publication of the first two volumes in 1759, and the publication of the subsequent
volumes over most of the 1760s, Sterne’s non-linear, digressive, satirical, bawdy,
frustrating novel has been transferred to various forms of materials and media. In its own
time, it was the subject of many imitations, doggerel poems, “poetical epistles,” 2 and
curio trinkets like porcelain dishes, playing cards, statuettes, and “sentimental” fans. 3
Under the auspices of Patrick Wildgust, the curator of Shandy Hall, in partnership with
the University of York, and with the support of the Laurence Sterne Trust, various kinds
of Shandean adaptations have appeared in different media over the past decade: a radio
drama produced by BBC Radio 4, an orchestral arrangement as part of the Practical
Project 2009, and a theatrical comedy piece by HC Productions, performed around the
UK and in Coxwold village. There have also been woodcut reproductions, exhibits,
auctions, and many other “ornamentations” of the graphic and artistic elements of the
novel. 4 Tristram Shandy is also the subject of Martin Rowson’s 1996 graphic novel
adaptation, which came back into print in 2011, and director Michael Winterbottom’s
2005 feature film, Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, starring Steve Coogan and
Rob Brydon. All this is to say that Sterne’s novel is a mine of gems that sparkle in new
formats. And yet, the novel is still criticized for its structure, subject, and style; if not
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