Browse Items (36 total)

Yorick, the narrator of A Sentimental Journey, decides to include the missing story of his lack of passport in France only when that story has consequence for the rest of his purported narrative.Thus, Sterne sheds light on the hidden nuance behind…

A portrait of Laurence Sterne, writer of A Sentimental Journey. Painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1760

In this excerpt, Descartes argues that common structures of knowledge and belief are merely "errors powerful enough to darken our natural intelligence," and thus places rational thought above all other modes of information. In doing so, Descartes…

This excerpt from a journal article introduces the idea of politeness in the eighteenth-century. This excerpt talks about trends between politeness and its relation to behavior. This is similar to discussions of sentimentalism, passions, and…

Oil painting portrait of Samuel Richardson, the author of "Pamela" and "Clarissa"

An Excerpt from 'A Sentimental Journey'

'A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY', the first part; by Laurence Sterne, M.A. The author's corrected draft, prepared for the press; together with the printed preface and woodcut illustrations of the edition by Nichols.

In this oddly sexual account of an interaction with a fille de chambre, Yorick remarks that the fille de chambre is so sentimentally in tune with himself that they must be related. Yorick had previously described the girl as "submissive" and…

Part of the point of Yorick's narrative is to contrast his benevolent attitude towards man with the attitudes expressed in the more spleen-oriented, irritable travel narratives of his contemporaries. This welcoming attitude is also what gives the…

An Excerpt from 'A Sentimental Journey' - The Act of Charity, Paris