Laurence Sterne

The eighteenth century was a period when the modern Novel emerged through the work of writers such as Laurence Sterne (1713-68), Richardson, Defoe, Fielding and Johnson. However, the writing of Sterne is recognized as influencing modern writing from Joyce and Woolf onwards more than any of the other eighteenth century novelists. In the last twenty years Sterne's work has become a focus for a flourishing body of work and significant debates in many new and developing areas of literary theory which include gender, sexuality, postmodernism, and deconstruction. Sterne's major novel 'Tristram Shandy' is regarded as deploying a range of 'post-modern literary devices' expected to be found in late twentieth century work rather than in work written in the 1700s. This is a critical reader, made up of a collection of essays, which combines the most interesting and stimulating recent critical thinking about Sterne. These essays represent recent theoretical and critical debates surrounding Sterne's writing and are grouped thematically For readers interested in literary criticism and 18th century literature.