Print Culture in Transition: Tristram Shandy, the Reviewers, and the Consumable Text
Shaun Regan, University College
Volume 14, no. 3-4, April-July 2002
©McMaster University, 2015. All articles published on the Eighteenth-Century Fiction website are protected by copyright held by Eighteenth-Century Fiction, a journal published by the Faculty of Humanities at McMaster University.
ABSTRACT
Among eighteenth-century works of prose fiction, Tristram Shandy is arguably both the most concerned with, and the most dependent upon, the material conditions of its production. From the “rash jerks, and hare-brain’d squirts” of Tristram’s pen to the anxiety engendered by unsold volumes, Sterne’s text is self-conscious about the physical act of writing and the economic realities of authorship. As readers have long recognized, moreover, some of Tristram‘s nicest jokes inhere in subtle manipulations of layout and form which are realizable only through the conventions of print. In the main, critical attempts to provide a broader context for this comic play of print have proceeded diachronically, relating Sterne’s text either to the general historical movement from an oral/aural to a visual, print-based culture, or to Scriblerian satires upon literary hack-work and the early-century explosion of printed matter. For all its insights, this work has had the unfortunate consequence of deflecting attention away from the specifically contemporary features of Sterne’s print comedy. In this essay, I argue for a more synchronic reading by considering two discourses that characterized English print culture during the third quarter of the eighteenth century: satires upon review criticism, and the debate over literary property. By reading Sterne’s text through these discourses, my aim will be to reposition Tristram both textually and culturally: textually, by differentiating between local effects which have often been lumped together in previous readings; and culturally, by locating the work more precisely within the print culture of its own day.
Other ECF articles on the topic of “Print Culture” include:
Clarissa Harlowe’s “Ode to Wisdom”: Composition, Publishing History, and the Semiotics of Printed Music
by THOMAS MCGEARY (ECF 24.3, Spring 2012)
True Crime: Contagion, Print Culture, and Herbert Croft’s Love and Madness; or, A Story Too True
by KELLY MCGUIRE (ECF 24.1, Fall 2011)
A Letter from Charlotte Smith to the Publisher George Robinson
by AMY GARNAI (ECF 19.4, Summer 2007)
©McMaster University, 2015. This copyright covers the exclusive rights to reproduce and distribute the article, including in electronic forms, reprints, translations, photographic reproductions, or similar. While reading for personal use is encouraged, Eighteenth-Century Fiction articles may not be reproduced, broadcast, published, or re-disseminated without the prior written permission of Eighteenth-Century Fiction at McMaster University. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form, such as on a web site or in a searchable database, or other uses of this material is not allowed. The copyright in this website includes without limitation the text, computer code, artwork, photographs, images, music, audio, video, and audio-visual material on this website and is owned by McMaster University. ©McMaster University 2015.