SoSe 17: PS-Surveying English Literatures II: Tristram Shandy
Jeff Thoss
Comments
There are two famous verdicts of Laurence Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759-67). One, penned by Samuel Johnson a mere decade after the novel’s publication, reads: “Nothing odd will do long. Tristram Shandy did not last.” The other, from a 1929 essay by Viktor Shklovsky, declares it to be “the most typical novel of world literature.” This class invites students to discover and discuss this very odd yet very typical novel. While practicing basic skills of analyzing narrative texts, it particularly wishes to contrast Tristram Shandy as the eighteenth-century oddity that Johnson saw it and Tristram Shandy as the timeless classic that Shklovsky saw it. Thus, we will, on the one hand, discuss the novel its historical context, with its connections to authors such as Cervantes, Burton and Locke as well as phenomena such as the rise of the novel and sentimentalism. On the other hand, we will examine the novel’s 20th and 21th-century rewritings by formalist criticism, postmodernist fiction as well as comic book and film adaptations.
Participants will have to meet the standard requirements: regular attendance, minutes and a position paper are obligatory, credits can be obtained by submitting a term paper.
NB: Tristram Shandy is long. Please (start) read(ing) it during the break.
Required texts: Please obtain the novel in a critical edition such as Penguin Classics, Oxford’s Worlds Classics or Norton Critical Edition. (Typography and layout greatly matter in this book.)
close13 Class schedule
Regular appointments