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Europe At War In The 1760s
May. 8th, 2024 08:20 am Here's an odd thing about the Europe of Sterne's a Sentimental Journey- which fictionalises Sterne's actual journeys through Europe in the 1760s.
France and England are at war- but the war is a matter of governments and armies, fought elsewhere- and very much above the heads of the people of the two countries.
And so Sterne's Parson Yorick can wander where he pleases in France and meet with nothing but good-nature and civility. No-one looks at him with suspicion, insults his country or calls him names; no-one talks politics at him. There's the small matter of a passport- because he has managed to enter the country without one and this could get him locked up in the Bastille- but he makes an appeal to an Anglophile nobleman and the matter is cleared up without any fuss....
France and England are at war- but the war is a matter of governments and armies, fought elsewhere- and very much above the heads of the people of the two countries.
And so Sterne's Parson Yorick can wander where he pleases in France and meet with nothing but good-nature and civility. No-one looks at him with suspicion, insults his country or calls him names; no-one talks politics at him. There's the small matter of a passport- because he has managed to enter the country without one and this could get him locked up in the Bastille- but he makes an appeal to an Anglophile nobleman and the matter is cleared up without any fuss....
