ADAPTING TRISTRAM SHANDY by Adria Young Submitted in ...

36 See Melvyn New. “Job’s Wife and Sterne’s Other Women” Out of Bounds: Male
Writers and Gender(ed) Criticism. Eds. Laura Claridge, Elizabeth Langland (Boston:
University of Massachusetts, 1990): 55-74. Also see Martha F. Bowden "The
Interdependence of Women in Tristram Shandy: A Chapter of Eyes, Sausages, and
Sciatica." English Language Notes 31.4 (1994): 40-47, and Elizabeth Harries. “Words,
Sex, and Gender in Sterne’s Novels” The Cambridge Companion to Laurence Sterne. Ed.
Thomas Keymer (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009): 111-124.
37 “Although capable of generous acts of private charity, Sterne was widely considered by
strait-laced neighbours as ill-suited to the cloth, not only for occasional neglect of his
clerical duties but, above all, for his ill-concealed and eventually notorious sexual liaisons
with servants (his wife once discovered him in bed with their maid) and prostitutes in
York” (Ross 8). Not to get Freudian, but Sterne also had astrained relationship with his
mother (8).
38 Unfortunately, the online exhibit of this piece by sculptor Peter Coates has been
removed. Those interested will have to go to the churchyard of St. Michael’s in Coxwold
to see it from henceforth.
39 See E.S. Turner. Unholy Pursuits: The Wayward Parsons of Grub Street (Sussex: Book
Guild Ltd., 1998): 80-83.
40 For more, see Dennis W. Allen. “Sexuality and Textuality in Tristram Shandy” Studies
in English Literature, 1500-1900. 25. 3 (1985): 651-670.
41 See Chapter III.
42 Even though Hutcheon theorizes film adaptation, I am extending it to include the
graphic novel in the discussion. Dirk Vanderbeke also recognizes Hutcheon's “blind eye
to sequential art” (105), and in his words, “it will therefore be necessary to do some
adapting of my own” (105). It should also be noted that I try to provide as many
examples from the graphic novel as I can, but it is overwhelmingly jam-packed full of the
critical history and contexts of the novel; many conservatory efforts were thus made in
the selection and presentation of evidence.
43 Cf. Chapter 3: criticism and reflections on the film adaptation all remark on the
“unfilmability” of the text.
44 Rowson does make significant changes to Eliot’s text, but the concerns and transfers
are much different than what he does with Sterne’s text a decade later. See Martin
Rowson. The Waste Land (London: Penguin, 1990).
45 Richter also observes this quality; he writes, “Tristram Shandy is an antinovel not
about WRITING but about READING Sterne’s Tristram Shandy” (np).
46 This study focuses on Western comics; all references to the history of comics are
within a North American and European context. As Scott McCloud demonstrates in
Understanding Comics, the East has an extensively rich tradition and history in the visual
arts, comics, graphic novels, but much different styles, conventions, and functions (81).
Storytelling methods and narrative patterns are also culturally inflected (81).
47 Wertham set up a study that tried to connect the actions of delinquent adolescents to
their enjoyment of comic books and show the negative “influence of comic books” (61).
He did focus on comics that were particularly violent or aggressive, but his conclusions
influenced mass perceptions of the medium (61).
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