Sentimental Journey, A, through France and Italy
The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature
Sentimental Journey, A, through France and Italy, by L. Sterne, published 1768.
The narrator, Parson Yorick (borrowed from Tristram Shandy),
is a man of great charm, sensibility, and gallantry, who sets out to
travel through France and Italy. He reveres ‘Dear sensibility!’ and is
frequently moved to tears. In parodying fashionable works of travel, he
contrasts his own appreciation with Smelfungus (a caricature of Smollett)
and with Mundungus (perhaps a Dr Sharp), both of whom had written
disparaging travel books about Europe. The parson is as full of gaiety
and irony as of tender feeling. In his travels from Calais to Amiens,
Paris, the Bourbonnais, and nearly to Modane, with his servant La
Fleur, he enjoys many encounters with all manner of men, from marquis
to potboy, and, more especially, with pretty women, who range from
ladies of wealth and elegance to chambermaids and shop girls.
The
book was no doubt based on Sterne's two journeys abroad in 1762–4 and
1765. It was well received by the public, and in 1769, after Sterne's
death, was continued by a ‘Eugenius’, traditionally assumed to be
Sterne's old friend Hall-Stevenson. A Sentimental Journey is probably the first English novel to survive in the handwriting of its author.
© "A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy." The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature 2003, originally published by Oxford University Press 2003. 1 Nov 2008
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