Re-Envisioning an Eighteenth-Century Artifact: A Postmodern Reading of Tristram Shandy Metadata

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Title

  • Main Title Re-Envisioning an Eighteenth-Century Artifact: A Postmodern Reading of Tristram Shandy

Creator

  • Author: Burns, Anthony Louis
    Creator Type: Personal

Contributor

  • Chair: Armintor, Deborah Needleman
    Contributor Type: Personal
    Contributor Info: Major Professor
  • Committee Member: Armintor, Marshall Needleman
    Contributor Type: Personal
  • Committee Member: Raja, Mashood
    Contributor Type: Personal

Publisher

  • Name: University of North Texas
    Place of Publication: Denton, Texas
    Additional Info: Web: www.unt.edu

Date

  • Creation: 2011-08

Language

  • English

Description

  • Content Description: The interjection of a new and dynamically different reading of Lawrence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy is imperative, if scholars want to clearly see many of the hidden facets of the novel that have gone unexamined because of out-dated scholarship. Ian Watt’s assumption that Sterne “would probably have been the supreme figure among eighteenth-century novelists” (291) if he had not tried to be so odd, and the conclusion that he draws, that “Tristram Shandy is not so much a novel as a parody of a novel” (291), is incorrect. Throughout the thesis, I argue that Sterne was not burlesquing other novelists, but instead, was engaging with themes that are now being examined by postmodern theories of Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Jean François Lyotard: themes like the impenetrability of identity (“Don’t puzzle me” (TS 7.33.633)), the insufficiency of language (“Well might Locke write a chapter upon the imperfections of words” (5.6.429)), and the unavailability of permanence (“Time wastes too fast” (9.8.754)). I actively engage with their theories to deconstruct unexamined themes inside Tristram Shandy, and illuminate postmodern elements inside the novel. However, I do not argue that Tristram Shandy is postmodern. Instead, I argue that if the reader examines the novel outside of its usual context inside the eighteenth-century novel, there are themes that are apparent in the narrative which have gone unexamined because of the way it has been classified inside academia, and that postmodernist theory allows for these themes to be re-examined in the postmodern culture in which we now reside.

Subject

  • Keyword: Tristram Shandy
  • Keyword: postmodernism
  • Keyword: Laurence Sterne

Collection

  • Name: UNT Theses and Dissertations
    Code: UNTETD

Institution

  • Name: UNT Libraries
    Code: UNT

Rights

  • Rights Access: public
  • Rights Holder: Burns, Anthony Louis
  • Rights License: copyright
  • Rights Statement: Copyright is held by the author, unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved.

Resource Type

  • Thesis or Dissertation

Format

  • Text

Identifier

  • Accession or Local Control No: burns_anthony_l
  • Archival Resource Key: ark:/67531/metadc84181

Degree

  • Degree Grantor: University of North Texas
  • Academic Department: Department of English
  • Degree Discipline: English
  • Degree Level: Master's
  • Degree Name: Master of Arts
  • Degree Publication Type: thesi
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