Cover
Halftitle Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Preface
1. Walter, Toby, Tristram, and the Reader: Sterne's Revision of "Dullness"
Sterne's Expansion of the Plot of Satire
The Critical Background
Critical Views of Sterne and Their Influence on Readings of Tristram Shandy
A Plan for Analysis of Sterne's Revision of Dullness in Tristram Shandy
2. The Yorick Standard, Walter's Benevolent Dullness, and Tristram's Friends: The Plot of Satire in Tristram Shandy
Dullness and Distortion of Reality
Normative Yorick and His Conflict with Dullness

Beyond the Black Page: Walter's Benevolent Dullness
The Sometimes-Self-Conscious Narrator and His Reader: Sterne's Purpose in Revising Dullness
3. "True Shandeism": The Unhappy Comic Action in Tristram Shandy
Laughing and Giving: Yorick and the Comic Spirit
The Resurrection of Yorick: Tristram's Contrast of Dullness and Benevolent Dullness
Tristram's Comic Conflict with Dullness in and beyond the Family
The Unhappy Ending of Toby's Comic "Siege"
4. Isolation and Death: The Tragic Undertones of Shandean Benevolent Dullness
Eugenius' Tragic Friend

Domestic Tragedy: The Isolation of Walter and Toby
"The Work Itself": Tristram's Dance with Death
5. Benevolent Dullness, Ambiguity, and the Reader: Modal Complexity and the Plots of Tristram Shandy
Dullness versus Benevolence: Public and Private Conflicts
Ambiguity and Sterne's Purpose in Revising Traditional Modes of Dullness
Laughter and "Self-Creation": The Reader and the Surrogate Reader
"So What?" Why This Study of Generic Plots in Tristram Shandy Matters
6. Laurence Sterne's Letters
Sterne's Epistolary Rebukes of Moralistic Dullness

Resisting Death, Fostering Friendship
Marital Tension and Separation
Sterne's Love Letters: The Rake, the Father, and the Pastor
Letters and Fiction on Finding Joy in the Pain
7. The Shandean Sermons of Parson Sterne
Sermons on "Kindred Virtues" and the Folly of Dullness
"True Shandeism": Parson Sterne's Challenge to Moralists
Religion as Joy and Mouring
8. Parson Yorick in A Sentimental Journey and in A Continuation of Bramine's Journal
A Sentimental Journey
Yorick's Sentimentality
Yorick's Deeper Sentiment
Yorick's Reflections on Overcoming Dullness

Continuation of Brahmine's Journal
Letters to a New Mrs. Sterne?
Confessional Letters from the Bawdy Prelate
Letters on Spiritual Healing
9. The International Perspective on Tristram Shandy and the Argument for Using Writing- to-Learn Strategies to Teach Sterne's Globally Significant Novel
The International Influence of Tristram Shandy and Sterne's International Influencers
Pedagogical Scholarship on Tristram Shandy
Samples of Post-Modern Approaches to Teaching Tristram Shandy
Samples of Contextual and Structural Approaches to Teaching Tristram Shandy