The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman : The Complete and Unabridged Edition - Softcover

Sterne, Laurence

9781438288932: The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman : The Complete and Unabridged Edition

Softcover

ISBN 10: 143828893X ISBN 13: 9781438288932

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2009

View all copies of this ISBN edition

0 Used

1 New

From � 13.33

Tristram Shandy has come to be seen as one of the greatest comic novels in English, as well as a forerunner for many modern narrative devices. As its title suggests, the book is ostensibly Tristram's narration of his life story. But it is one of the central jokes of the novel that he cannot explain anything simply, that he must make explanatory diversions to add context and colour to his tale, to the extent that we do not even reach Tristram's own birth until Volume III. Consequently, apart from Tristram as narrator, the most familiar and important characters in the book are his father Walter, his mother, his Uncle Toby, Toby's servant Trim, and a supporting cast of popular minor characters. Most of the action is concerned with domestic upsets or misunderstandings, which find humour in the opposing temperaments of Walter-splenetic, rational and somewhat sarcastic-and Uncle Toby, who is gentle, uncomplicated and a lover of his fellow man.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

Review

"A lot of nonsense is written about Laurence Sterne's "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman" -- and that's just as well. It would be depressing in the extreme if this triumphant tangling up of the threads of reason with the strands of linear narrative were to admit of any effective unravelling; which is as much to say, that were you to find yourself picking apart a lucid, non-discursive exposition of the novel - its themes, its techniques, its plot -- you would know that you had finally gone mad." -- Will Self