Sterne, the Moderns, and the Novel.(Scepticism and Literature: An Essay on Pope, Hume, Sterne, and Johnson)(Book Review)

Publication: The Modern Language Review

Publication Date: 01-JUL-05

Bookmark this article Print this article Link to this article Email this article Digg It! Add to del.icio.us RSS

COPYRIGHT 2005 Modern Humanities Research Association

Sterne, the Moderns, and the Novel. By THOMAS KEYMER. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2002. xiv+222 pp. 47 [pounds sterling]. ISBN 0-19-924592-4.

Scepticism and Literature: An Essay on Pope, Hume, Sterne, and Johnson. By FRED PARKER. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2003. x+290 pp. 50 [pounds sterling]. ISBN 0-19-925328-8.

Both Thomas Keymer and Fred Parker have written 'source studies', though their books have little in common besides a reading of Laurence Sterne. Parker's Scepticism and Literature proves true to its subtitle by emulating the loosely discursive nature of the traditional essay form. Parker writes a thoroughly untheoretical if not unsystematic study of 'sceptical thinking' in four eighteenth-century authors, whose models are Montaigne and Locke. In Sterne, the Moderns, and the Novel Thomas Keymer draws upon theories of intertextuality in order to argue that Tristram Shandy is very much a part of the popular literary, political, and social culture of its own day. Parker's study is focused on what Keymer calls 'positivist claims about "influence"' (p. 11), while Keymer explores the 'hypotexts' or 'aleatory' networks of influence and allusion. Even though Keymer's study is more narrowly focused than Parker's (one genre, one author, one novel), his historicist approach produces more general knowledge about eighteenth-century culture than Parker's...

Read the full article for free courtesy of your local library.