Tristram Shandy and the Divided Worlds of Politics

Abstract

This chapter examines the extent to which The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne engaged with politics. Beginning with Sterne’s fleeting involvement in Whig political journalism, the chapter shows how these early experiences as a writer coincided with dramatic changes to the organization of partisanship and the emergence of cynicism towards the political establishment as such. Tristram Shandy took shape, the chapter goes on to show, in relation both to the changing parameters of political activity and to a growing impulse to escape from politics altogether. Taking cues from a Dublin-published pamphlet that imagined Tristram entering into the fray of political activity, the chapter brings into focus the diverse political trajectories that Sterne incorporated into his fiction—and the ways they were subsequently closed down or rerouted by the ongoing composition and reception of his works and with the onset of his sentimental reputation.