Sterne's famous fictional travelogue was published in two volumes a month before his death in 1768, and is based on his two journeys abroad in 1762-64 and 1765. Sterne called it his "Work of Redemption," presumably for the sins and errors committed in writing the greatest "cock and bull" story ever published in the form of "Tristram Shandy." Through the amiable Parson Yorick, a character familiar to readers of "Tristram Shandy," Sterne parodies the superior tone of the fashionable travel books of his time in which Europe was often compared unfavorably to England. His narrative seems to revere sentiment as the great measure of all experience--from nostalgia and melancholy to romance and extreme tenderness--while at the same time an ambiguous degree of irony wavers somewhere between Sterne and the voice of his narrator.
Note: This synopsis may refer to a different edition of this book.
Daniel George "Fiction, no doubt, most of it, but concocted on a basis of fact, the interludes of seriousness as distinct from sentimentality drawn from recollections of his earlier travels in France, the whole worked over with great care and nicely calculated to please his large and faithful public, as indeed it did. That he himself was pleased with it we may well believe. It continued the projection of his ideal self."
"The author goes on a journey through France and Italy, but spends most of the book on the journey from Calais to Paris and his stay in Paris. Enjoyable but slow book. Never really captured my interest."
"A bit too much sentiment in places and the instructional nature of the main character's voice can make your eyes roll with 21st century cynicism (he is a Parson, I guess) but by the end, I was surprisingly into it. I found the slyness in tone amusing and the oblique sexual nature of the main character kind of sexy? In a far-removed-in-the-past, 18th-century, bawdy farce kind of way. Be warned: reading the opening chapters/fragments can be confusing at first because of Sterne's idiosyncratic style of writing - lots of pauses and unfinished sentences and tangents - but once you familiarise yourself with it, the rest of the book goes by really quickly."
"Reading Sterne is a little like watching good stand-up--there are some awful, highly tedious misfires (or miscommunications--Sterne can be very oblique and the fact that the diction is, well, 18th c. doesn't help), but there are some absolutely brilliant sections as well. And when he is describing sentiment, Sterne's intensity of feeling can be overwhelming and deeply moving."
They order, said I, this matter better in France---- You have been in France? said my gentleman, turning quick upon me with the most civil triumph in the world. Strange! quoth I, debating the matter with myself, that one and twenty miles sailing, for 'tis absolutely no further from Dover to Calais, should give a man these rights.
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