300 years of Laurence Sterne (contains one explicit image)

Explore Laurence Sterne's 300-year legacy, his groundbreaking novel Tristram Shandy, and its lasting impact on literature and culture.

Key Takeaways

Laurence Sterne transformed the novel form with his innovative narrative techniques.
Tristram Shandy challenges traditional storytelling with its fragmented and conversational style.
Sterne's characters and visual elements contribute to the novel's enduring appeal.
His works have inspired a wide range of adaptations and influenced major literary figures.
Sterne's legacy remains significant in both literature and cultural studies.

What the video covers

Laurence Sterne was born 300 years ago and is best known for his novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman.
Sterne's work was revolutionary for its bawdy humor, quirky narration, and unconventional storytelling style.
Tristram Shandy's narrative is non-linear, conversational, and filled with eccentric characters like Uncle Toby and Parson Yorick.
The novel features unique visual devices such as black pages, marble pages, and diagrams to enhance storytelling.
Sterne satirized contemporary medicine and society through characters like Dr. Slop.
His other notable work, A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy, combined travel narrative with humor and sentimentality.
Sterne's influence extends to adaptations in various media including graphic novels, films, plays, and operas.
Famous writers such as Virginia Woolf and James Joyce were inspired by Sterne's stream-of-consciousness style.
The video draws on research from the Oates collection at Cambridge University Library.
Sterne's works continue to intrigue readers and scholars 300 years after his birth.

Chapters

Who was Laurence Sterne and why is he significant?

Laurence Sterne was an 18th-century author known for his novel Tristram Shandy, which revolutionized narrative style with its humor, eccentric characters, and unconventional storytelling.

What makes Tristram Shandy different from other novels of its time?

Tristram Shandy is notable for its non-linear, conversational narrative, quirky characters, and unique visual elements like black and marble pages, which challenged traditional novel structures.

How has Laurence Sterne influenced modern literature?

Sterne’s stream-of-consciousness style influenced writers like Virginia Woolf and James Joyce, and his works have inspired numerous adaptations across various media including graphic novels and films.

Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown

Speaker A

This is a portrait of the author Lawrence Sterne, who was born 300 years ago on the 24th of November 1713. Now at the National Portrait Gallery, it was painted in 1760 by Joshua Reynolds, London's most fashionable portrait painter. When Sterne shot to fame,

Speaker A

thanks to his book The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, its bawdy humor, quirky narrator, and characters, an unusual take on what a novel should be, had turned a country cleric into a national celebrity. I first read Tristram Shandy

Speaker A

many years ago and taught it to English students at Cambridge. No matter how many times I read Tristram Shandy, I discover something new and realize how significant Sterne's influence on literature and culture has been. I'm especially interested in how, from the

Speaker A

18th century to the present day, readers have produced adaptations of Sterne's work, and I recently published a book about it. In researching my book, I drew extensively on the Oates collection of Sterne-related material held at Cambridge University

Speaker A

Library. Sterne was born in Ireland to a family of modest means, and he only managed to attend Jesus College in Cambridge thanks to an influential uncle. Like many people of his class, when Sterne left Cambridge, he became a

Speaker A

clergyman in the Anglican Church. In 1760, he settled in the village of Coxwold in Yorkshire, where he wrote much of Tristram Shandy. He even jokingly called his cottage Shandy Hall. After all, Sterne's readers had identified him with his

Speaker A

fictional narrator Tristram Shandy, a role he played up to. Why was Tristram Shandy such a sensation? Some people loved the book, some people loathed it, but everyone was talking about it. When Sterne made the journey from Yorkshire to

Speaker A

London, he was delighted to find that Tristram Shandy had sold so quickly that a copy couldn't be bought either for love or money. Tristram Shandy was different from the types of books readers were familiar with. Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Samuel

Speaker A

Richardson's Pamela, and Henry Fielding's Tom Jones are extremely popular novels that tell their stories in a straightforward way, with clear plot lines and neatly described characters. Tristram tells his story in a haphazard way. He lives up to his name, as

Speaker A

Shandy means "crap-brained" in Yorkshire dialect. Tristram isn't even born until the third volume of the book. He often starts an anecdote, then breaks it off, only to pick it up again several pages later. His opinions come thick and

Speaker A

fast in a seemingly random order. Tristram's storytelling style also fulfills his claim that writing is but another form of conversation. He wants his readers to join in this conversation by following his narrative not in quest of adventures as they might find in Robinson Crusoe,

Speaker A

but by getting to know Tristram and the Shandy family better by reading about their amusing habits, hang-ups, and ideas. Tristram Shandy's plot is full of characters who are just as eccentric as Tristram. His uncle Toby is a retired army officer obsessed with military

Speaker A

plans and fortifications. He even recreates sieges and battles on his bowling green, as you can see in these illustrations of Tristram Shandy from the 18th and 19th centuries. Toby's a lovable character, all the more so because he's easily confused

Speaker A

about quite simple things, because he brings everything back to his hobby horse of military fortifications. At moments when he's most perplexed, Toby whistles the tune of Lillibullero, which you heard earlier. Lillibullero is a throwback to Toby's old army

Speaker A

days and to the battles fought in the wake of the Glorious Revolution. Parson Yorick is another memorable character from Tristram Shandy. Sterne borrowed the name from Shakespeare, whom he greatly admired, but he also describes Yorick as being rather like

Speaker A

Sainte Don Quixote, another literary hero. Although he is an important character throughout Tristram Shandy, Yorick's death is announced in volume one. Tristram reuses Shakespeare's famous quotation, "Alas, poor Yorick," before printing two black pages that mark this somber event. These black pages are one of

Speaker A

Tristram Shandy's most distinctive visual features. Sterne uses numerous similar devices throughout Tristram Shandy. The text is filled with asterisks and dashes of varying length. In some cases, these symbols can help to make a bawdy joke. Sterne uses asterisks to cover a

Speaker A

four-letter word which Toby's apparently too modest to say. Sterne sticks two marble pages partway through volume three of Tristram Shandy. Marble sheets were usually used as the endpapers, so by bringing them inside the book, Sterne shows how unique

Speaker A

Tristram Shandy is. He calls the marble pages "the motley emblem of my work." Tristram also shows us just how zaney his approach to storytelling is by drawing a diagram of his squiggly plot lines. Tristram Shandy is much more than

Speaker A

just a collection of rude jokes, quirky characters, and eye-catching visual devices. This squiggly line represents Trim swirling his stick in the air as he makes his argument for celibacy. Tristram suggests that his life is made up of opinions more than events. He wants to

Speaker A

create a history of what passes in a man's own mind, where ideas, memories, and bits of knowledge randomly spring into our heads. Tristram mentions John Locke's important essay concerning human understanding as a reference point for this idea. He often quotes from the many books

Speaker A

he claims he’s read by Shakespeare, Canto, K, and Montaigne. Tristram Shandy is filled with references to philosophy, classical literature, science, art theory, politics, and medicine. Sterne satirizes contemporary medicine in the character of Dr. Slop, the male midwife who is supposed to help

Speaker A

deliver Tristram using his new-fangled forceps. Sterne held a dim view of these modern methods of childbirth, so he makes Dr. Slop a particularly unpleasant character. He's fat, bad-tempered, and pompous, characteristics which many illustrators emphasized in their portraits of

Speaker A

Slop. Tristram Shandy wasn't the only fictional book that Sterne wrote. A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy is a travel narrative that mixes touching scenes with the more suggestive humor that had made Sterne famous. Yorick's method of storytelling is also just as

Speaker A

predictable and meandering as Tristram Shandy's, as this book illustration suggests. A Sentimental Journey became even more successful than Tristram Shandy and found fans right across Europe. Yet the popularity of both novels means that they have inspired imitations and adaptations in many different media.

Speaker A

There have been poems, songs, plays, operas, and a huge range of visual images relating both to Sterne and to his books. From Tristram Shandy's first book illustrations by William Hogarth onwards, the tradition of adapting Sterne continues. The graphic artist Martin Rowson

Speaker A

produced a graphic novel version of Tristram Shandy in 1996. In 2005, the director Michael Winterbottom made a film based on Sterne's unfilmable books starring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon. Many famous writers have been influenced by Sterne: Virginia Woolf and

Speaker A

James Joyce do Tristram's haphazard method of telling stories as they pop into his mind in the stream of consciousness fiction they pioneered. Sterne famously joked that he wrote not to be read but to be famous. Three hundred years after

Speaker A

his birth, his books continue to intrigue us.

Topics:Laurence SterneTristram Shandy18th century literatureCambridge Universitynovel innovationliterary adaptationstream of consciousnessA Sentimental JourneyJoshua Reynoldsliterary influence

Get More with the SozAI App

Transcribe recordings, audio files, and YouTube videos — with AI summaries and speaker detection. 30 minutes free.

App Store Google Play

Or transcribe another YouTube video here →

Free tools: TXT to SRT · SRT Validator · Merge SRT · Subtitle to Text · All tools