- Publisher:
- ALMA CLASSICS
- Year of publication:
- 2016
- Subject:
- Classic fiction
- ISBN:
- 978-1-84749-416-0
- Pages:
- 608
THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF TRISTRAM SHANDY, GENTLEMAN
LAURENCE STERNE
Purporting to be an autobiography of the antihero Tristram Shandy, Lawrence Sterne's novel is a comic masterpiece of digression, egoism and sensationalism, as its hilarious asides, explanations and host of memorable secondary characters - such as Uncle Toby, Dr Slop, Parson Yorick and Widow Wadman - take centre stage, at the expense of the actual life events the book sets out to depict.
A humorous compendium of European thought and literature - pastiching the likes of Locke and Bacon and referencing Pope, Swift, Cervantes and Rabelais - emerges amid the convoluted accounts of Tristram's conception, misnaming and accidental circumcision by a sash window, in a shrewd narrative that examines the role and nature of language itself.