The Life and Opinions of Tristam Shandy, Gentleman (Modern Library) (Modern Library Classics)

by Laurence Sterne (Author), Laurence Sterne (Author), Robert Folkenflik (Introduction) (Author)

• Used

  Illustrated
  2003

  $3.25

• Used

  Paperback
  2000

  $3.25

  The comic masterpiece Tristram Shandy is generally regarded as the progenitor of the 20th-century novel, consisting of a plot frequently and flagrantly interrupted by digressions. This study edition contains both the text and a commentary upon it.

• Used

  Hardcover
  1975

  $5.50

• New

  Paperback
  1996

  $6.94

  With a new Introduction by Cedric Watts, Research Professor of English, University of Sussex. Laurence Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman is a huge literary paradox, for it is both a novel and an anti-novel. As a comic novel replete with bawdy humour and generous sentiments, it introduces us to a vivid group of memorable characters, variously eccentric, farcical and endearing. As an anti-novel, it is a deliberately tantalising and exuberantly egoistic work, ostentatiously digressive, involving the reader in the labyrinthine creation of a purported autobiography. This mercurial eighteenth-century text thus anticipates modernism and postmodernism. Vibrant and bizarre, Tristram Shandy provides an unforgettable experience. We may see why Nietzsche termed Sterne 'the most liberated spirit of all time'.