"Tristram Shandy": Laurence Sterne's history of Ireland.
Item
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Title
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"Tristram Shandy": Laurence Sterne's history of Ireland.
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Identifier
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AAI9976882
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identifier
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9976882
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Creator
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Meyler, Joan Bernadette.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Angus Fletcher
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Date
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1998
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Literature, English
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Abstract
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The major arguments are as follows: (1) Tristram Shandy is an allegorical work and the primary allegory, that of Ireland and her child, figured by "my mother" and Tristram, has never been perceived, or, if noted, never commented upon. (2) The fact that no one has observed this and the many other allegories that permeate the novel requires an explanation. Either the allegories are not present or there has been a failure on the part of criticism to determine the meaning/s of the novel, at least to the extent of accurately saying what it is about. (3) If the allegories are, in fact, verifiably embedded in the text and can be recognized once they are pointed out but have remained unremarked, then such a belated discovery of them can shed light on our understanding of language use and definitions of meaning. (4) Extending Eva Fedder Kittay's concept of "semantic fields" (Metaphor: Its Cognitive Force and Linguistic Structure 33) to include what I have called "key word semantic fields" has great explanatory power and allows us to understand how Sterne creates intertextual references through systems of logically or associationally concatenated though textually separated key words. (5) Importing the theory of "analytical hypotheses" (Word and Object 1--79) that Willard Van Orman Quine uses in connection with radical translation can give a name and some conceptual content to the process by which we formulate and accept or reject interpretative hypotheses in the process of interpreting a complex work such as Tristram Shandy. (6) The major frequently interlocking allegories that are focused on include: (a) "My mother" and Tristram as representatives of Ireland and her progeny; (b) The Lesson in how to read furnished by Sterne's hitherto unnoticed structural incorporations of Milton's Paradise Lost and polemical prose and Shakespeare's plays; (c) The allegories relating to war, including William and Anne's Wars and the war that William Pitt was prosecuting on the continent when the first volumes of the novel were published; and (d) The allegories relating to the "fall" (that of man in Paradise Lost, England in the Glorious Revolution and the falls of Ireland at various historical moments).
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
