The Monk of Calais (1780) by Angelica Kauffman, depicting The Revd. Mr Yorick exchanging snuffboxes with Father Lorenzo: "having a horn snuff box in his hand, he presented it open to me.—You shall taste mine—said I, pulling out my box and putting it into his hand."
A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy is a novel by Laurence Sterne, written and first published in 1768, as Sterne was facing death. In 1765, Sterne travelled through France and Italy as far south as Naples, and after returning determined to describe his travels from a sentimental point of view. The novel can be seen as an epilogue to the possibly unfinished work The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, and also as an answer to Tobias Smollett's decidedly unsentimental Travels Through France and Italy. Sterne had met Smollett during his travels in Europe, and strongly objected to his spleen, acerbity and quarrelsomeness. He modelled the character of Smelfungus on him.[1]
The novel was extremely popular and influential and helped establish travel writing as the dominant genre of the second half of the 18th century. Unlike prior travel accounts which stressed classical learning and objective non-personal points of view, A Sentimental Journey emphasized the subjective discussions of personal taste and sentiments, of manners and morals over classical learning. Throughout the 1770s female travel writers began publishing significant numbers of sentimental travel accounts. Sentiment also became a favourite style among those expressing non-mainstream views, including political radicalism.
The narrator is the Reverend Mr. Yorick, who is slyly represented to guileless readers as Sterne's barely disguised alter ego. The book recounts his various adventures, usually of the amorous type, in a series of self-contained episodes. The book is less eccentric and more elegant in style than Tristram Shandy and was better received by contemporary critics. It was published on 27 February, and on 18 March Sterne died.
Plot summary
The Beautiful Grisette, 1853, by William Powell Frith, showing a scene from the book. Parson Yorick—depicted as Sterne—and the gloveseller, Grisette, are in her Paris shop.
Yorick's journey starts in Calais, where he meets a monk who begs for donations to his convent. Yorick initially refuses to give him anything, but later regrets his decision. He and the monk exchange their snuff-boxes. He buys a chaise to continue his journey. The next town he visits is Montreuil, where he hires a servant to accompany him on his journey, a young man named La Fleur.
During his stay in Paris, Yorick is informed that the police inquired for his passport at his hotel. Without a passport at a time when England is at war with France (Sterne travelled to Paris in January 1762, before the Seven Years' War ended[2]), he risks imprisonment in the Bastille. Yorick decides to travel to Versailles, where he visits the Count de B**** to acquire a passport. When Yorick notices the count reads Hamlet, he points with his finger at Yorick's name, mentioning that he is Yorick. The count mistakes him for the king's jester and quickly procures him a passport. Yorick fails in his attempt to correct the count, and remains satisfied with receiving his passport so quickly.
Yorick returns to Paris, and continues his voyage to Italy after staying in Paris for a few more days. Along the way he decides to visit Maria—who was introduced in Sterne's previous novel, Tristram Shandy—in Moulins. Maria's mother tells Yorick that Maria has been struck with grief since her husband died. Yorick consoles Maria, and then leaves.
After having passed Lyon during his journey, Yorick spends the night in a roadside inn. Because there is only one bedroom, he is forced to share the room with a lady and her chamber-maid ("fille de chambre"). When Yorick can't sleep and accidentally breaks his promise to remain silent during the night, an altercation with the lady ensues. During the confusion, Yorick accidentally grabs hold of something belonging to the chamber-maid. The last line is: "when I stretch'd out my hand I caught hold of the fille de chambre's... End of vol II". The sentence is open to interpretation. You can say the last word is omitted, or that he stretched out his hand, and caught hers (this would be grammatically correct). Another interpretation is to incorporate "End of Vol. II" into the sentence, so that he grabs the Fille de Chambre's 'End'.
Sequel
Because Sterne died before he could finish the novel, his long-time friend John Hall-Stevenson (identified with Eugenius in the novel[3]) wrote a continuation. It is titled Yorick's Sentimental Journey Continued: To Which Is Prefixed Some Account of the Life and Writings of Mr. Sterne.
Legacy
In the 1880s, American writer Elizabeth Robins Pennell and her artist husband Joseph Pennell undertook a journey following Sterne's route. Their travels by tandem bicycle were turned into the book Our sentimental journey through France and Italy (1888).
Viktor Shklovsky considered Sterne one of his most important precursors as a writer, and his own A Sentimental Journey: Memoirs, 1917–1922 was indebted to both Sterne's own Sentimental Journey and Tristram Shandy.[4]
Footnotes
↑ Head, Dominic, ed. (2006). "Travels through France and Italy". The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English (3rded.). Cambridge University Press. p.1124.
↑ Sterne, Laurence (2008). Jack, Ian; Parnell, Tim (eds.). A Sentimental Journey and Other Writings. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p.236. ISBN978-0-19-953718-1.
↑ Sterne, Laurence (2008). Jack, Ian; Parnell, Tim (eds.). A Sentimental Journey and Other Writings. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p.233. ISBN978-0-19-953718-1.
↑ Richard Sheldon, intro. to Shklovsky, A Sentimental Journey: Memoirs, 1917–1922 (Dalkey Archive Press, 2004: ISBN1564783545), p. xvi.
Laurence Sterne was an Anglo-Irish novelist and Anglican cleric who wrote the novels The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman and A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy, published sermons and memoirs, and indulged in local politics. He grew up in a military family, travelling mainly in Ireland but briefly in England. An uncle paid for Sterne to attend Hipperholme Grammar School in the West Riding of Yorkshire, as Sterne's father was ordered to Jamaica, where he died of malaria some years later. He attended Jesus College, Cambridge on a sizarship, gaining bachelor's and master's degrees. While Vicar of Sutton-on-the-Forest, Yorkshire, he married Elizabeth Lumley in 1741. His ecclesiastical satire A Political Romance infuriated the church and was burnt.
Tobias George Smollett was a Scottish novelist, surgeon, critic and playwright. He was best known for picaresque novels such as The Adventures of Roderick Random (1748), The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle (1751) and The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771), which influenced later novelists, including Charles Dickens. His novels were liberally altered by contemporary printers; an authoritative edition of each was edited by Dr O. M. Brack Jr and others.
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, also known as Tristram Shandy, is a novel by Laurence Sterne, inspired by Don Quixote. It was published in nine volumes, the first two appearing in 1759, and seven others following over the next seven years. It purports to be a biography of the eponymous character. Its style is marked by digression, double entendre, and graphic devices. The first edition was printed by Ann Ward on Coney Street, York.
Viktor Borisovich Shklovsky was a Russian and Soviet literary theorist, critic, writer, and pamphleteer. He is one of the major figures associated with Russian formalism.
Journal to Eliza is a work by British author Laurence Sterne. It was published posthumously in 1904. It is written as a diary, but was supposedly intended as a love letter to Eliza Draper. Sterne predicted that it would be published long after the deaths of both himself and Draper.
Travels Through France and Italy is travel literature by Tobias Smollett, published in 1766. Smollett used the opportunity to deride the social norms of the Kingdom of France and the Italian Peninsula, and to voice his Anti-Catholicism. The book inspired a reply in the novel A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy (1768) by Laurence Sterne, which contained a satirical depiction of Smollett as Smelfungus.
Sterne may refer to
Hafen Slawkenbergius is a fictional writer referenced in Laurence Sterne's novel Tristram Shandy. Slawkenbergius was "distinguished by the length of his nose, and a great authority on the subject of noses".
Smelfungus is the name given by Laurence Sterne to a character in his novel A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy, written in 1768. The character was created as a satire of Tobias Smollett, himself author of a volume of Travels Through France and Italy, which was published in 1766. Sterne had met Smollett during his own travels in Europe, and strongly objected to Smollett's "spleen, acerbity and quarrelsomeness". He modelled the character of Smelfungus on him for the "snarling abuse he heaps on the institutions and customs of the countries he visited".
Sentimental Journey may refer to:
A Cock and Bull Story is a 2005 British comedy film directed by Michael Winterbottom. It is a film-within-a-film, featuring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon playing themselves as egotistical actors during the making of a screen adaptation of Laurence Sterne's 18th-century metafictional novel Tristram Shandy. Gillian Anderson and Keeley Hawes also play themselves in addition to their Tristram Shandy roles. Since the book is about a man attempting but failing to write his autobiography, the film takes the form of being about failing to make the film.
Shandy Hall is a writer's house museum in the former home of the Rev. Laurence Sterne in Coxwold, North Yorkshire, England. Sterne lived there from 1760 to 1768 as perpetual curate of Coxwold. He is remembered for his novels The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman and A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy.
Yorick is an unseen character in William Shakespeare's play Hamlet. He is the dead court jester whose skull is exhumed by the First Gravedigger in Act 5, Scene 1, of the play. The sight of Yorick's skull evokes a reminiscence by Prince Hamlet of the man, who apparently played a role during Hamlet's upbringing:
Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy; he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? Your gambols? Your songs? Your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar?
Sentimentalism is a practice of being sentimental, and thus tending towards making emotions and feelings the basis of a person's actions and reactions, as opposed to reason.
Johann Joachim Christoph Bode was a well-known German translator of literary works.
Laurence Sterne was an Anglican clergyman. In that position he delivered many sermons. Early in his career, he decided to publish his sermons. At first, only two were published. Sterne later parodied sermon writing in his novel, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman along with adding semi-serious sermons directly into the text. Throughout his career, Sterne continued to preach and collect his own sermons.
John Hall-Stevenson, in his youth known as John Hall, was an English country gentleman and writer.
The Captive, from Sterne is a painting by Joseph Wright of Derby completed in 1774 and now in the National Gallery of Canada. Sterne's Captive, first exhibited by the artist in 1778, is a similar painting by Wright in the Derby Museum and Art Gallery. The latter painting resulted in a rare engraving, as its purchaser commissioned a print run of only twenty copies before the copper printing plate was destroyed. In 2012, Derby Museum commissioned another Captive painting from Emma Tooth.
Richard Hurlstone or Richard Hurleston was a British portrait painter known for being a pupil of Joseph Wright of Derby. He went to Italy with Wright and his wife. He returned and died young after being hit by lightning on Salisbury Plain.
Jean-Claude Gorgy was an 18th-century French playwright. Jean-Claude Gorgy was the son of a valet to the Count de Maillebois. He himself became secretary of the count.
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