Introduction to the Eighteenth Century Novel

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 recognised 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 volume combines the most interesting and stimulating recent critical thinking about Sterne and represents recent theoretical and critical debates surrounding Sterne's writing.