Artistic incorporation and accusations of plagiarism
Sterne incorporated into Tristram
Shandy many passages taken almost word for word from Robert Burton's The
Anatomy of Melancholy, Francis Bacon's Of Death, Rabelais and many
more, and rearranged them to serve the new meaning intended in Tristram
Shandy.[1] Tristram Shandy was highly praised for its
originality, and nobody noticed until years after Sterne's death. The first to
note them was physician and poet John Ferriar, who did not see them negatively,
and commented:[1][2]
Critics of the 19th century, who
were hostile to Sterne for other reasons, used Ferriar's findings to defame
Sterne, claim the he was artistically dishonest, and almost unanimously accused
him of mindless plagiarism.[1] Scholar Graham Petrie closely
analyzed the alleged passages in 1970; he observed that while more recent
commentators now agree that Sterne "rearranged what he took to make it
more humorous, or more sentimental, or more rhythmical", none of them
"seems to have wondered whether Sterne had any further, more purely
artistic, purpose." Studying a passage in Volume V, chapter 3, Petrie
observes: "such passage ... reveals that Starne's copying was far
more from purely mechanical, and that his rearrangements go far beyond what
would be necessary for merely stylistic ends."[1]
Rabelais
A major influence on Tristram
Shandy is Rabelais's Gargantua and Pantagruel.[3][1]
Rabelais was by far Sterne's favourite author, and in his correspondence he
made clear that he considered himself as Rabelais' successor in humour writing,
and instead distanced himself from Jonathan Swift:[4][5]
I ... deny I have gone as far as
Swift: he keeps a due distance from Rabelais; I keep a due distance from him.
One of its many passages that
Sterne incorporated is the one about "the length and goodness of the
nose".[6][7][8] The first scene in Tristram Shandy,
where Tristram's mother interrupts his father during the sex that leads to
Tristram's conception, testifies to Sterne's debt to Rabelais. [citation
needed]
Sterne had written an earlier piece
called A Rabelaisian Fragment, which indicates his familiarity with the
work of the French Monk and practicing Doctor. But the earlier work is not
needed to see the influence of Rabelais on Tristram Shandy, which is
evident by the generally implausible story line and pervasive satirical,
comedic portrayals of everyday life.
Ridiculing solemnity
Sterne was no friend of gravity, a
quality which excited his disgust; Tristram Shandy gave a ludicrious
turn to solemn passages from respected authors that it incorporated, as well as
to the Consolatio Literary Genre.[9][1]
One of the subjects of such
ridicule were some of the opinions contained in Robert Burton's The Anatomy
of Melancholy, a book that mentioned sermons as the most respectable type
of writing, and that was favoured by the learned; Burton's attitude was to try
to prove indisputable facts by weighty quotations; his book consisted mostly of
a collection of the opinions of a multitude of writers, to which Burton often
modestly refrained to add his own, divided into quaint and old-fashioned
categories; it discussed and determined everything from the doctrines of
religion to military discipline, from inland navigation to the morality of
dancing-schools.[9]
Many of the singularity of Tristram
Shandy character are drawn from Burton. Burton introductory address to the
reader, where he indulges himself in an Utopian sketch of a perfect government,
form the basis of Tristram Shandy's notions on the subject. Burton's
quaint and old fashioned categories inspired Sterne for many of his ludicrous
chapters titles. And Sterne parodies Burton's attitude by weighty quotation.[9]
The first four chapters of Tristram Shandy are also founded on some
passages in Burton.[9]
In Chapter 3, Volume 5, Sterne
makes a parody of the Consolatio Literary Genre, mixing and reworking passages
from three "widely separated sections" of Burton's Anatomy,
including a parody of Burton's "grave and sober account" of Cicero's
grief for the death of his daughter Tullia.[1]
Other techniques and influences
His text is filled with allusions
and references to the leading thinkers and writers of the 17th and 18th
centuries.[citation needed] Pope, Locke, and Swift were all
major influences on Sterne and Tristram Shandy. Satires of Pope and
Swift formed much of the humour of Tristram Shandy, but Swift's sermons
and Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding contributed ideas and
frameworks that Sterne explored throughout his novel. Other major influences
are Cervantes, Montaigne's Essays, and John Locke.[citation
needed] It also owes a significant inter-textual debt to Burton's The
Anatomy of Melancholy,[1] Swift's Battle of the Books,
and the Scriblerian collaborative work, The Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus.[citation
needed]
The shade of Cervantes is similarly
present throughout Sterne's novel. The frequent references to Rocinante, the
character of Uncle Toby (who resembles Don Quixote in many ways) and Sterne's
own description of his characters' "Cervantic humour", along with the
genre-defying structure of Tristram Shandy, which owes much to the
second part of Cervantes' novel, all demonstrate the influence of Cervantes.[10]
The novel also makes use of John
Locke's theories of empiricism, or the way we assemble what we know of
ourselves and our world from the "association of ideas" that come to
us from our five senses. Sterne is by turns respectful and satirical of Locke's
theories, using the association of ideas to construct characters'
"hobby-horses", or whimsical obsessions, that both order and disorder
their lives in different ways.
Sterne's engagement with the
science and philosophy of his day was extensive, however, and the sections on
obstetrics and fortifications, for instance, indicate that he had a grasp of
the main issues then current in those fields.[citation needed]
Today, the novel is commonly seen
as a forerunner of later novels' use of stream of consciousness and
self-reflexive writing. However, current critical opinion is divided on this
question. [citation needed] There is a significant body of
critical opinion that argues that Tristram Shandy is better understood
as an example of an obsolescent literary tradition of "Learned Wit",
partly following the contribution of D.W. Jefferson.
Reception
It was not always held in high
esteem by other writers (Samuel Johnson responded that, "Nothing odd will
do long. Tristram Shandy did not last."),[12][13] but
its bawdy humour was popular with London society, and it has come to be seen as
one of the greatest comic novels in English, as well as a forerunner for many
modern narrative devices and styles, such as visual writing.
The success of Sterne's novel got
him an appointment as curate of St. Michael's Church by Lord Fauconberg in Coxwold,
Yorkshire, which included the living at (what Sterne called) Shandy Hall. The
medieval structure still stands today under the care of the Laurence Sterne
Trust [1] after its acquisition in the 1960s. The gardens, which Sterne tended
to during his time there, are daily open to visitors.
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