Sterne's Sentimental Journey
May. 5th, 2024 08:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphilo Sentimentality has come to mean false feeling, but when the word came into vogue, in the 18th century, it meant true feeling. And that's how Sterne uses it.
I blame the change on the Victorians who were so keen on true feeling (which is commendable in them) that they sometimes resorted to faking it.
The Sentimental Journey is the narrative of man travelling through Europe and determined, though he slips occasionally, to think the best of everyone and everything he comes across- and to enter into and accomodate himself to their feelings. It's on the way to being a treatise on holy living. And if that sounds dull, be it understood that Sterne is lighthearted about it, and quirky and insightful and funny.
It's a happy book, never pious- good grief, no (though Sterne was a clergyman)- and all the more remarkable in that Sterne was dying- and knew that he was dying- when he wrote it....
I blame the change on the Victorians who were so keen on true feeling (which is commendable in them) that they sometimes resorted to faking it.
The Sentimental Journey is the narrative of man travelling through Europe and determined, though he slips occasionally, to think the best of everyone and everything he comes across- and to enter into and accomodate himself to their feelings. It's on the way to being a treatise on holy living. And if that sounds dull, be it understood that Sterne is lighthearted about it, and quirky and insightful and funny.
It's a happy book, never pious- good grief, no (though Sterne was a clergyman)- and all the more remarkable in that Sterne was dying- and knew that he was dying- when he wrote it....
