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ADAPTING TRISTRAM SHANDY by Adria Young Submitted in ...

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11 Even this is tricky, and potentially problematic. As Henry Duff Traill writes <strong>in</strong> 1882,<br />

“To talk of ‘the style’ of Sterne is almost to play one of those tricks with language of<br />

which he was so fond. For there is hardly any def<strong>in</strong>ition of the word to describe him as<br />

hav<strong>in</strong>g any style at all . . . He was determ<strong>in</strong>ed to be uniformly eccentric, regularly<br />

irregular . . . [He is] a perfect marvel of literary slipshod” (142). There is someth<strong>in</strong>g<br />

slightly <strong>in</strong>effable about Shandyism.<br />

12 The portrait of Sterne <strong>by</strong> Sir Joshua Reynolds, done <strong>in</strong> 1760, shows Sterne <strong>in</strong> his<br />

clerical robes with a smirk.<br />

13 See Chapter III, 17.<br />

14 Wayne C. Booth. “The Self-Conscious Narrator <strong>in</strong> Comic Fiction BeforeTristram<br />

Shandy” PMLA (1952): 163-185.<br />

15 Sterne sent a letter to an acqua<strong>in</strong>tance of Hogarth claim<strong>in</strong>g how wonderful it would be<br />

to have Hogarth illustrate the first two volumes; Hogarth did it. See Arthur H. Cash.<br />

Laurence Sterne: The Later Years (New York: Routledge, 1992):10-12. Also see<br />

Laurence Sterne. Letters. Ed. Lewis P. Curtis (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1935) 99.<br />

16 Sterne was not the first to <strong>in</strong>clude illustrations <strong>in</strong> his work, but they show his<br />

<strong>in</strong>vestment <strong>in</strong> the conventions of the novel, and his awareness of the marketplace and<br />

marketability. For more on novel illustration, see Thomas Keymer, Peter Sabor. “Pamela<br />

Illustrations and the Visual Culture of the Novel” 'Pamela' In the Marketplace: Literary<br />

Controversy and Pr<strong>in</strong>t Culture <strong>in</strong> Eighteenth-Century Brita<strong>in</strong> and Ireland (Cambridge:<br />

Cambridge UP, 2005): 143-176. For more on the ties between Hogarth and Sterne, see<br />

William Holtz. “The Journey and the Picture: The Art of Sterne and Hogarth” A History<br />

of Book Illustration: 29 Po<strong>in</strong>ts of View. Ed. Bill Katz (Methuen, NJ: The Scarecrow<br />

Press, 1994): 315-332.<br />

17 “Each marbled leaf <strong>in</strong> the first edition of Tristram Shandy was prepared <strong>in</strong>dividually”<br />

(Day 144). For details on the page, see W.G. Day. “Tristram Shandy: The Marbled Leaf”<br />

Library 27 (1972): 143-145. Also, De Voogd discusses the magnitude of this <strong>in</strong>clusion as<br />

representative of Sterne's <strong>in</strong>terest <strong>in</strong> materiality: “each page hand-marbled, each side<br />

different and unique, each side hand-stamped, each leaf stuck <strong>in</strong>, the sheer scope of the<br />

undertak<strong>in</strong>g a tell-tale <strong>in</strong>dication of the extent to which Sterne was prepared to go <strong>in</strong><br />

turn<strong>in</strong>g his book <strong>in</strong>to an aesthetic object” (384).<br />

18 See Wayne C. Booth. “Did Sterne Complete Tristram Shandy?” Modern Philology<br />

48.3 (1951): 172-183.<br />

19 Between 1720 and 1729, book and pamphlet production occupied 1.1% of the market,<br />

and <strong>by</strong> 1770, it had only <strong>in</strong>creased to about 4% (Fl<strong>in</strong>t 344); “religious discourse”<br />

cont<strong>in</strong>ued to dom<strong>in</strong>ate the market (Fl<strong>in</strong>t 348).<br />

20 See Ian Watt. “The Read<strong>in</strong>g Public and the Rise of the Novel” The Rise of the Novel:<br />

Studies <strong>in</strong> Defoe, Richardson, and Field<strong>in</strong>g (Berkeley: University of California Press,<br />

1957): 35-59.<br />

21 Sterne has been charged with plagiarism and defended aga<strong>in</strong>st plagiarism aplenty, on<br />

both counts. Elizabeth Kraft, for <strong>in</strong>stance, calls Sterne's Sermons largely “second-hand<br />

stuff” (26), and James Gow's dissertation, The Contexts of Sterne's Sermons, rebuts Kraft<br />

and her critical ilk, locates and identifies Sterne’s sources, and also situates Sterne’s<br />

sermon work <strong>in</strong> an ecclesiastical context of “borrow<strong>in</strong>g” (1).<br />

89

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